Coloring Within the (Written) Lines

The phone buzzed on the table beside me. A quick glance told me my employer was trying to get in touch with me.

“Hello?”

“What are you doing?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.

“Writing a letter. Why?”

There was a moment of silence before she continued on. “We were wondering if you could come in early today...”

The grilling started at the time clock. “Who were you writing to?” “Why don't you send emails like the rest of the world?”

Truly there are any number of ways to stay in touch electronically with those we love these days, and I'm grateful for the ease and speed of all the messaging options available to us. But there is something to be said about a letter you hold in your hand that sets it in a category of communication by itself.

For a good portion of my life I was on the receiving end of such a blessing, my father having used the only form of communication available to him in his day and age to stay in touch with his children who had left home for any length of time. From daily encouragement to homesick kids at summer camp, to weekly submissions to college mailboxes, to family newsletters sent to our own eventual roadside mailboxes, he was the epitome of faithfulness in that regard. By rough calculation, my dad wrote me between 600 and 700 letters in my lifetime, culminating in the one left in a strongbox, written in the days before his death, which he knew to be imminent. I gathered together the ones I still had on hand after he died and put them in a binder to be kept with my most treasured possessions.

Years later, his youngest grandson started asking questions about this grandfather who had died long before he was born. Naturally the subject of his letter writing habit came up in the ensuing discussion, and I mentioned my amazement at the sheer quantity of mail I had received from my home address.

“It is evidence of how much he loved you,” my son replied, words that prompted me to take pen in hand and start writing letters to my own boys who had moved out on their own. In one of the first missives I sent to this son in particular I included a couple of letters I had kept from my dad, hoping that he would catch a glimpse of the man he was, from the words he wrote, to the way he phrased his thoughts, to the ideas that intrigued his curious mind. How gratifying it was to hear my boy later voice his reluctance to return them, saying he felt in doing so he was saying goodbye to a man he was just barely getting to know.

I used to be an avid letter writer. Somewhere deep down I still am. I felt the stirring inside when I came across a couple of websites last year, one of which belonged to a man who planned to write a letter a day for a year, mailing them off to people who signed up to receive them. A similar one dedicated just the month of February to putting snail mail in any form in mailboxes around the country, I suppose as a means of spreading love in the month dedicated to the same. Intrigued, I knew that when the second month of the new year rolled around, I'd be similarly engaged in some way.

Suddenly that very month was upon me, and I found myself with no time to prepare for the event, no time in my schedule to devote to it...and very close to discarding the idea altogether. But something happened that changed my mind. I was plugging in my electric rollers one morning, and noted that because the set had turned upside down in the cabinet, the rollers inside were a jumbled mess. I opened the lid and went about the task of setting each one back on its heat conduit, muttering “Get back to your post!” as I did so. Strange that I would speak to my curlers in such a way, and stranger still that God would speak to me through them! Suddenly those five words were a directive from the Lord to get back to a task I had fallen away from some years ago.

I've written letters all my life, but once I came to know the Lord, He put purpose in my passion. The letters I sent were no longer just a written chat, but a chance to share my Father's love along with my own, in the hope that those on the receiving end would get to know Him a little better, much as I hoped the snippets from my dad's letters that I sent to my son would introduce him to to the grandfather he never knew.

Individual as we are in our pursuits and giftings, we each have our own way of making the Father known. Christian author Max Lucado describes it as coloring a picture of God using whatever crayons we've been given.

Perhaps you've had your life turned upside down by events beyond your control, and now find your priorities to be a jumbled mess. It's not too late to reconnect with your lfe source and reignite the fire within. Others of us simply set our tools aside for a time and they got lost in the clutter of our everyday lives. Now is the time to dig them out and put them to work once more...to get back to our posts. As the times get more difficult, the world needs to be able to see the image of our Father more clearly than ever before. May He simply inspire the artist inside each of us to new effort...and may our work become evidence of how much we love Him, indeed.

“Do not neglect the gift which is in you, [that special inward endowment]... Practice and cultivate and meditate upon these duties; throw yourself wholly into them [as your ministry]...”

(1 Timothy 4:14-15 AMP)

The Sound of Surrender

The bridegroom stood at the altar by the side of the minister, his eyes locked on the double doors that would soon open for his bride. The bridesmaids had sauntered down the aisle on the arms of the groomsmen minutes before, visions of pink with perfectly coifed hair, their faces wreathed in smiles. The twin ring bearers, dressed to the hilt in black tuxes with black and white stuffed pillows that hung carelessly at their sides, dutifully made it down together, mindless of the little flower girl who was slated to accompany her brothers down the white runner that stretched seemingly endlessly before her.

She started off bravely enough, concentrating on the instructions she‘d been given: step, reach into the basket, drop the petals. Step…basket…petals. But the stares of the crowd on either side of the aisle began to weigh on her, and as she looked nervously around, her steps slowed, then faltered. Suddenly she dropped her basket, turned and fled back from whence she’d come.

Quickly those in the back gathered her together, retrieved the abandoned basket and set her on her way once more. A little less sure of herself this time she yet resolutely gave it another try. Forgetting the petals this go-around, she concentrated on heading for the group smiling at her from the front and made it a few pews farther than the first time before again turning tail.

The guests laughed in sympathy at the little girl’s plight and thought surely the ceremony would simply proceed without her. But the bride remained out of sight, the wedding party up front stayed frozen in position, and so the guests sat silently, waiting expectantly for what would happen next.

With an incredible show of patience, her father knelt behind the little girl, whispering words of encouragement to her as he gently but firmly propelled her down the aisle once more. “Walk down to the front, Sis,” he urged. “Walk all the way down.”

A third time she started down the aisle. But in much the same spot as the first two attempts she finally stopped, threw her head back and slammed her hands down at her sides. “Daddy, I just can’t do this!” she cried, and ran weeping back into his open arms. He swept her up and held her close before carrying her around behind the seated guests to a spot where the family sat up front, even as the bridal march sounded and the doors were thrown open to admit the radiant bride.

I’ve heard the words of that father come out of the mouths of many a minister through the years, as time and again they’ve urged the lost to walk down an aisle to receive the gift of salvation at the end of a service. Sometimes it takes a lot of courage to leave the safety of one’s seat and travel down that impossibly long aisle while strangers stare. A drawing in their hearts pulls them forward even as fear holds them back. Some march down as effortlessly as the little boys in the bridal party. But others struggle through repeated attempts to respond to the love that calls them forward.

It’s this latter group that have captured the Father’s heart and likewise have held the march of endtime events captive until the list of all of those to be involved in the ceremony is complete. Surely all Heaven is standing at attention, the Bridegroom poised and eagerly awaiting His Bride, the trumpet even at the angel’s lips to call her forth…only to find that the Father holds up His hand and puts the show on hold while He gently works with the fearful and afraid. With endless patience He gently but purposefully urges them on until at last He hears the sound of surrender He’s been waiting for…”Daddy, I just can’t do this!” It’s when we realize that we can’t get to where we need to be on our own best intentions that we are swept up and carried in by a love that made a way for us Himself. We ride in on the arms of His sacrifice, His loss, His eternal solution to our sin problem.

Looking at my friend’s wedding pictures online recently I smiled to see that the little flower girl was very much a part of the party at the reception hall, smiling in the arms of other guests, dancing with the bride, and (at last!) standing in her spot in the bridal party photo at the start of the celebration. Her struggle didn’t disqualify her, even though some of us were ready to move on without her. Likewise God makes a way for us to be included when our own failures would have otherwise locked us out. In arms spread open on the cross He carries us from the hopelessness of our tearful inabilities to a spot right up front where all the action is, where our loved ones await us and the biggest party of all is just about to start.

“The Lord does not delay and is not tardy or slow about what He promises, according to some people‘s conception of slowness, but He is long-suffering (extraordinarily patient) toward you, not desiring that any should perish, but that all should turn to repentance.”
(2 Peter 3:9 AMP)

I'll CARRY You

He stood in the grass, sobbing, unable to walk any further, the loose Band-Aid hanging lopsidedly from the bloody knee he'd skinned mere moments before. This three-year-old son of our associate pastor was heading to where his father was closing down an afternoon of music ministry at a local park. He wanted to show his dad what had happened to him - to be held close and comforted in his loving arms, knowing that his father would somehow make everything in his world right again.

But he couldn't get there. His sore knees made walking difficult, and so he just stood where he'd stopped, seeing his dad still impossibly far away, and crying in his pain and despair. About all I could do for him was reattach his Band-Aid and talk to him reassuringly. But his dad caught sight of him, saw his tears, and came running. I left when he arrived but took away with me the picture of this father kneeling beside his child, saying, "I'm here, Son. I'll carry you wherever you need to go."

It's not like the father didn’t have anything else to do. After an afternoon at the park his evening is filled with dismantling sound equipment, taking down a tent, and loading everything in trucks and vans to be transported back to the church. Once there it had to be unloaded and set in place in time for a church service the following evening. He had hours of work still ahead of him. But all that was forgotten when he saw his son's tears. Of all the positions he holds in life, the job title that means the most to him is "Dad". He dropped everything to be by his son's side in his time of need. Nothing is more important to him - ever - than the well being of his child.

Each of us is likely to face times in our lives when we'll stand in this little boy's shoes - wounded and in pain, wanting to get to our Father but seemingly unable to reach Him on our own. We get to a point where we feel we simply can't go on and stand there in tears, looking hopelessly to where we want to be. The limbs that have carried us to His side in times past seem to fail us just when we need them most.

It's hard to reach God on our own when we're hurt, sick or in pain. We find it more difficult during these times to stay focused on Him - it's harder to pray and study the Word, and often impossible to attend church services. The enemy tries to convince us that we're losing ground with God just when we need Him the most. But the Holy Spirit reminds us that God's love for us is in no way affected by our inability during these times to reach out to Him in the way we're accustomed to. His love for us remains strong, because it's not based on what we can do but rather on who He is - our loving Father. Like any good dad, His love is constant and perhaps directed towards us in a special way when we need it the most.

Others' attempts to minister to us during these times often accomplish little other than to straighten the Band-Aids which cover our wounds and reassure us with their words of hope. Sometimes we just need more than that. And so God comes to us. He does what this young father did - He sees our tears and comes running. And He wants us to know that if need be, He'll carry us all the way Home.

"We are children of God… So too the [Holy] Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness… For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(Romans 8:16,26, 38&39 AMP)