Monthly Archives: April 2020

Intercessor and Friend

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Jesus, Pandemic

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I don’t know about you, but I am ready for some relief from sheltering at home. I’d really like to go to a concert right now. Packed with people. And I’d also really like to be all alone for a whole day, and eat dinner at a restaurant. Dining in.

People are debating whether we will all go back to “normal” or if we should never be the same normal again.

Me, I’d just like to take my laptop in to our local computer shop, once he reopens, and see if he can fix the “b” key. It was sticking so I took the little cover off it and cleaned it and the adjacent keys (that usually works) but it’s now to the point where I have to leave the cover off and push it just so with the flat end of a pen, and then quick hit the backspace key to keep it from typing that letter over and over!

My name is Becky. I type that letter a lot.

This is just a little thing, yet it irritates me and makes me a little pithy. Multiply that times however many hundreds of things are different and irritating during this pandemic, and I can see how people would long for normal, whatever that means.

I think it would be better to work towards a new standard where the little things don’t irritate me as much, where I have learned to handle the stress in better ways.

I wish there were someone who could help me face these things, who could feel my frustration, who sees my heart even when my mouth is spouting pithiness.

Which is why I am so thankful that Jesus is right now interceding for me, sitting at God’s right hand, telling him what it feels like to be human and scared and irritated and frustrated and all the other things I’m feeling.

This week I was reading in Job, and he went through a lot worse than we’re going through now, yet he also was thankful someone knew and loved him enough to plead his case.

Job 16:19-21 New International Version (NIV)

19 Even now my witness is in heaven;
    my advocate is on high.
20 My intercessor is my friend[a]
    as my eyes pour out tears to God;
21 on behalf of a man he pleads with God
    as one pleads for a friend.

These words were penned long before Jesus lived on earth as God inside the body of a man.

Last week I had been pondering the new life Jesus rose from the grave to embrace, and now this week I read this passage in Job and it gives me even more to think about!

What a unique perspective. Job lived very close to the creation of the first people. When I read Job I find it odd that unlike most of the Old Testament there are not references to Israel, so I wonder if he lived before Abraham.

He had wonderful conversations with God – “Where were you…!” God sets Job straight on his power and majesty, his creativity and provision.

And Job feels the very real actions of someone interceding for him.

“My witness” he says. Someone who sees inside him, who knows not only what he does but the state of his heart when he does or thinks anything.

John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word, and that in the beginning, through him ALL things were made.

Even Job.

Who better than your creator to give witness to how you are made and everything you are capable of doing?

“My advocate…” The word means a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy. Synonyms are champion, upholder, supporter, promoter, protector, to name a few.

Job was in the middle of being put through everything Satan could throw at him short of taking his life, and he felt someone in heaven was his champion, his protector.

And he seems to look at this supporter as different from the person of God, the one he feels he has not spoken against.

“My intercessor is my friend…” I just LOVE this! If there were someone advocating for me, I wouldn’t want it to be a stranger who is just out to promote their own agenda, and finds that if I am on their team it makes them stronger.

And it’s not someone who knows me casually, who is okay with me joining them, again to help their own cause have more support.

Job sees his intercessor as his friend! Someone who knows and loves him, who cares about his well-being, who has contributed good to his life.

Someone who would one day lay his life down for his friend.

I will never forget a long ago Beth Moore study I did in which one of the many words she went back to the original language and defined was “intercede”.

Her explanation was that it is when someone who has the right to speak to another, the right relationship and the authority, takes the other person’s face in their hands, looks them in the eye, and once they have their full attention, speaks on someone else’s behalf.

So whenever I read “intercede” in the Bible I picture it.

Jesus, equal with, part of, intricately related to God the Father, faces him. He takes the Father’s face in his hands, looks him straight in the eye.

And says, “Becky needs…”

“On behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend.”

I read Job’s words, and I get the sense that he had an image of someone looking Father God in the eye, pleading with him.

“Job needs…”

But there’s a difference I see between Job and me, between that time in history and today.

Jesus always was and always will be, but in the course of human history he had not yet inhabited the body of a man and lived a human life. He knew exactly how Job was made, what he had designed him to be able to do, so he could speak with authority.

Job could trust his maker to look out for him.

How much more can we? Can I?

Jesus not only made me, he lived on this earth and was tempted in every way. Every way I ever have or ever will be.

He knows what it feels like to be me.

So I can trust him to know what I need.

And so can you.

A New Life to Live

16 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Jesus, Redemption

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Jesus returned to heaven completely different from when he left it to become our Savior.

I read that idea in Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for his Highest, the April 8 reading. I don’t know if I ever thought about Jesus that way before.

This past Sunday was Easter. Resurrection Sunday. The basis for Christianity. The reason for hope.

He is risen!

And without a physical church to go to, it was hard to focus on why we celebrate, the difference Jesus’ death and resurrection makes for me.

I never thought about the difference it made for him.

Chambers writes, “When our Lord rose from the dead, He rose to an absolutely new life – a life He had never lived before He was God Incarnate. He rose to a life that had never been before.”

I’ve been thinking about it all week.

How strange did it have to be in the first place for Jesus to become a person. He went from being everywhere all the time, to confined in the skin and bones of a human being.

It’s more than I can grasp, what God is capable of doing as a spiritual being with no boundaries.

Yet Jesus let himself be bound in the 24/7 of life on earth, for the sole reason that we people needed someone to save us. Someone not only good, but sinless.

Genesis 3 talks about how sin entered the world and that one day Eve’s offspring would crush Satan under his heel.

And that day came, and we celebrate it as Easter.

So I’ve been thinking this week about Jesus and how he was more different yet, in a brand new way, when he rose from the dead on the third day and walked out of that tomb.

He had lived as a baby, a child, a teenager, a young man, working and learning and growing in knowledge and wisdom.

He never sinned.

That’s so hard to wrap my head around, because opportunities and temptations to choose the wrong option come to me every day. If they came to him as frequently, he spent a lot of time consciously saying no so that he could show us all a better way to live our own lives.

He was out in the desert alone and tempted by Satan for 40 days early in his public ministry.

I wish I could know more about how, specifically, he was enticed. But God chose not to tell us the details. And maybe that’s for a reason.

So that whatever it is each one of us is tempted to do, we can imagine Jesus being faced with a similar choice.

Yours may not seem like a big deal to me, and mine may seem silly to you, but they were all real to Jesus. He was tempted in every way scripture tells us. So I believe that all the ways that any person can, is, will be tempted, Jesus went through it.

He heard every lie from Satan and he was able to resist and stand firm.

Another mystery is what was happening to Jesus between his death on the cross and his resurrection.

I heard possibilities when I was a child that I can’t find in the Bible now. All I know is that when Jesus rose from the dead, God’s face was no longer turned away from him, and he sent his angels to roll the stone away that covered the tomb.

The sin of the world he had carried on to the cross was gone, and his relationship with the Father was fully restored.

Jesus didn’t appear the same, or at least those who knew him weren’t able to recognize him. Again, it doesn’t say, but it seems all the wounds from the lashes, the beatings and scourging were gone. His raw, oozing sores, skin hanging from his limbs, would have made him instantly recognizable.

Except the nail holes in his hand, the hole where the spear had pierced his side. Those he had Thomas, one of his disciples, feel to prove he was really Jesus.

And as far as we know, just a few weeks later when he ascended back into heaven, he carried those scars with him.

He lived in a body like ours, and as his time to suffer and die drew very close, he asked God if there wasn’t some other way.

That right there always strikes me as so thoroughly human. I can syke myself up to do something hard, and at the last minute be searching desperately for an easier way to get the job done. Or better yet, call it off until a more convenient time.

Jesus was human like me. But unlike me he was also God, and he refused to give in to those very human fears. He was willing to follow through, to do whatever Father God required of him.

And look at him on Easter morning! Not only free of agonizing wounds, but alive!

Here’s the unknowable part. When Jesus rose from the dead he still appeared as a man, but he was no longer bound by the laws of this earth. He appeared here and then there, walked through closed doors, traveled distances quickly. People who knew him didn’t recognize him, and then later they did. And eventually he rose into the clouds, ascending back to heaven.

Did he resent those few weeks being chained here, eager to return to the Father? Or did he see us all in a brand new way, now that the plan had been a success?

When I read Chambers’ devotion, it made me think that every person Jesus saw or thought about, what he was thinking was how much he wanted every one of them to feel what he was feeling, to be totally and forever alive in a body that was changed and ready for eternity.

Far from begrudging this world a little more time, I imagine he was eager to get on with his new life, this life he had never lived before.

Because now he had done it. He had conquered death. He had made a way to live forever. And he needed to get back to work, doing what his few short years on earth had equipped him to do.

Romans 8:34 tells us that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us as you read this.

Not one minute of his time on earth was wasted. He stored it up, learned from it all, became intimately aware of every temptation we could face, felt the feelings we feel.

And now, in heaven, there are no philosophical discussions of what a person might feel like if this or that trouble came to them.

There is God the Father in control of all that happens, and Jesus looking him in the eye saying, “Let me tell you how this feels, what they are going through.”

Redeeming every minute of time he spent on this earth for our good.

So that we can join him, doing our forever jobs, when our few years on this earth are over and we also start living our more real and eternal lives.

Attitude Check

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Relationships

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Character doesn’t change in a crisis.

An old saying rings true these days: Character is how you behave when there’s no one around to see you.

While as individuals and families we are currently, for the most part, stuck in our houses, that means there are few people around to see how we behave with each other.

That’s a good thing most days.

Because there are certainly lots of situations where the worst qualities we have are being tempted to rear their ugly heads.

In our house when someone starts to get an attitude we are coming up with creative ways to describe it. Like …pithy. An old-fashioned word we often use to describe my mother-in-law, who died 20 years ago.

Dolores would get a look on her face, her lips pursed and nose wrinkled, and she’d say something…pithy. Meant to sting a little or cast a bit of a bad light on the subject of her comment.

She wasn’t a gossip, she didn’t egg other people on, but once in a great while she would let her feelings be known.

While we all can get a little edgy, I’m thankful that we are loving, concerned people, that we are looking out for each other, and that so far we don’t have any really obnoxious character flaws that could result in someone getting hurt.

At least up to today.

In our local area I’ve heard stories about a lot of people showing just how kind and other-centered they are. People making cloth masks to cover the official ones, groups assembling meals for health care workers, likewise for truckers and others who need to be on the road.

Food and supplies seem to be the main focus of those getting out to do some volunteering, taking care of people’s basic needs.

At least in the efforts they are putting forth, I think it shows their good character.

And then there are others.

I want to start by saying that I don’t open and follow and get sucked into all the so-called news items that I see scrolling on Facebook or that people send to me on my phone.

But I have heard about some of them.

And I’ve gotten phone calls that seemed opportunistic and were probably scams. I don’t engage with them either.

Because a person’s character really doesn’t change in a crisis, good or bad.

Actually, I think people tend to exercise their strongest traits when under pressure. People who would help any stranger they meet are frustrated at home, looking for ways to reach out and help. And people who are only out for number one will still find a way to advance their own welfare.

I bring this up because there is a lot of blame going around on social media and in many fake news types of posts (at least in the titles I see scrolling), and beyond being frustrating and … okay, I’m going to use what qualifies as a cuss word in our house … stupid! … it’s not doing anything to help anybody where they are currently living through this pandemic.

I wonder, as I’m sure many people do, where this novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 came from. Exactly how did it start. But I don’t want to know so I can point a finger and say, “Aha! You’re the culprit!”

I want to know that scientists are doing some real scientific investigation and figuring out why all of a sudden a virus that usually causes a cold or flu is sweeping around the globe leaving thousands of people dead and many more affected.

And I know that takes time, and isn’t glamorous.

I want to know that if this is like flus that tend to come back year after year, that some of those scientists are developing a vaccine to help us all fight it the next time around.

I want to see a list of symptoms that don’t change, sometimes daily. Perhaps there are official sites that have unchanging information, but what is being passed around anecdotally seems to have altered several times over the last few weeks.

I want to have an actual description from people who have had the virus and lived to tell about it as to what their personal symptoms were like, because as I hear from friends of friends about people who are sick with COVID-19, they seem to have symptoms different from what the media is telling us.

If those were the types of stories out for common consumption, I might bite and take a look at them.

But really people, is there any logic at all in saying that any country, government, or government official is to blame for the spread of this virus?

Because we just don’t have that kind of control over these things.

We can sit around with all this time on our hands and second guess each other. Or we could start studying to become epidemiologists so that we can then, and only then, say with any authority how COVID-19 got started and spread.

A virus cares nothing about any country, state or city’s public policy, nor will the amount of information shared about it and the timing of that information make a bit of difference in a pandemic running its course.

As I listen to and heed the measures our state of Ohio has been taking over the last weeks, I’m glad that there is at least a system in place that can communicate the current best practices to the general public.

But whether I choose to follow those guidelines or mandates comes back around to character.

I know it is frustrating for many Americans right now with the political season of presidential politics being disrupted by something too small to see. And it is very tempting to take out ones frustrations on people you don’t have any respect for, or who you feel have in some way adversely affected your life.

I would like to suggest that instead of spreading around these non-stories that only inflame one group against another, that we all look around us for someone whose life we can make a little bit more bearable until we can be out and about again.

After all the fake news people keep sending me, a newsy account of what’s been going on in your life and household, preferably on paper in your own handwriting, would be something I could spend all day reading over and over.

Even if you get a little pithy.

Time to Grow

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Pandemic

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Three weeks.

Twenty-one days, just over 500 hours, which is just over 30,000 minutes.

That’s how long it’s been, and ticking, since our family started sheltering at home, the day our governor urged everyone to do so while this pandemic runs its course.

Time.

We have exactly as much of it as in any other three week period, looking at the numbers.

But when your options have narrowed it gives you a whole new perspective on time.

One day we were running normal errands, taking Baby Girl to the chiropractor then dropping her at AWANA at church. The next day Dear Husband and I have a two hour adventure at the grocery store to buy what should have taken us half that much time, seeing the panic and confusion on every face.

Our clothes and dishes stay washed up. I’ve been slowly doing some spring cleaning (not usually an annual thing at our house!). We’ve binge-watched all kinds of things. Our games have been getting used.

And there is still time to spare.

Baby Girl has been toying with the idea of growing a garden this year. I bring this up because I think it’s a great idea for lots of people to do.

I personally do not have a green thumb. I’ve told you that I love to dig in the dirt so it may be stained brown, but the only thing I grow well and consistently is weeds.

But thinking about it, many people have the time it takes over the next month to start some seeds and remember to water them. To set them in a sunny spot for the day and take them back in for cold nights. To transplant into bigger pots or rig up a mini-greenhouse for a small garden plot with old plastic and wire coat hangers, or whatever you have on hand.

We’re going to the store way less than normal, but I’m betting the seasonal area of our grocery would have a pretty full rack of seed packets, and with a little research we could have some cool weather vegetables out in the ground or pots by the time three more weeks have gone by.

The date I’m hearing to stay mostly at home is now June 1. And I want to give a plug for your friendly local greenhouse growers, because they have acres of plants already growing long before we started hearing about coronavirus.

Thirty-four years ago I was working at one. Growing up one of our family’s closest friends was the owner of a greenhouse and farm, and I spent a lot of time out there as a girl. Once I was married I quit my job as a maid at a hotel and was looking for something less full-time. My mom reminded me of the good times she’d had working at the greenhouse years before, so I called.

That year I spent January to April planting seedlings in flats, then worked the sales floor watering, fertilizing and restocking the plants through summer and fall, and then hefting Christmas trees before having a few weeks off.

The next planting season I ran the table, which involved punching holes in all the flats using a treadle-type machine invented by a man in my town. Then I’d send them down the middle of the planting table where eight women would take out a new flat and plant the seedlings, then put the full boxes onto carts. I got to move the carts around, find the next seedlings, get the picture stakes to put in the cups.

That year I got pregnant with Oldest Son, and after the planting season was done I retired.

It was probably my most fulfilling job ever.

Those plants didn’t make it into my ground, so I didn’t have to keep them alive all summer as they grew bigger. But I still love the day I go out to the greenhouse each spring and make the selections of what I want to grow.

Or at least try to grow.

And this year I intend to do the same.

It will be different than other years, most things are right now. I’ll go earlier in the season than normal to avoid being around many people. I’ll probably make one of my famous lists, and try to stick to it. I’ll need to be deliberate about what I really think we’ll be able to plant over the next few weeks and not spend more than necessary. And unlike other years I won’t be able to make multiple trips to pick up things I forgot.

In addition to vegetables and herbs I’ll also get some flowers for the family graves. Those will definitely wait until after May 15 around here to get planted in the ground, but I can keep them alive for a few weeks. I hope.

The hardest part of the whole thing will be staying six feet away from the people I’ve known and loved that still work there, my friend who took over for his dad as he got older. His family that was young and growing when I worked there so many years ago, now adults with their own kids helping in the family business.

There are lots of things that could be done with my time over the next month. Friends are making masks for health-care workers. Others are checking in with various people, making sure they’re okay and stocked up with supplies. Some are tackling projects like painting and other home improvements. I know someone who has ordered a keyboard and is planning to learn to play it over the next few weeks.

So this is just another idea, in case you don’t like any of the things you are hearing about, or have already done them all and need a new project.

Start with something easy, like leaf lettuce. Buy a packet of seeds, planting medium, an empty flat and cups. Plant them, water them gently and set them in a sunny window and in a couple of weeks you can put them out in the ground or a bigger pot or whatever you have to grow them in.

One of the many benefits of keeping even a small garden is the time you get to spend with your hands in the dirt, weeding and coddling and eventually harvesting.

And less time needed shopping for fresh produce in the stores.

You know, while I’m spring cleaning, I may even find some unusual containers to hold my plants.

That’ll save me time later, when I don’t have to take the containers to Goodwill.