A Little Humor is Helpful

I’ve decided to go back to writing chapters on The Simsville Inheritance, my humorous serial mystery.  I just uploaded chapter 18 and hopefully will get another chapter done in the next few days.  In between I thought I’d give Myrtle’s unnamed friend another adventure, this time maybe with shoplifting… we’ll see how that goes.

For anyone reading who is not familiar with these two projects, the Simsville Inheritance is about Avery Alderson, a young lady who has inherited a whole town.  Now what is she going to do with it?

Myrtle’s unnamed friend is an elderly lady who gets herself into pickles from time to time, then describes all the action to her friend Myrtle on the phone.  Click on my regular website to read these, plus other things… www.BetteCox.com.

Multitudes in the valley of decision

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! (Joel 3:14)

That’s where we are this week. Once again many people are horrified at the actions of one. Once again the horror will soon wear off and they will resume their lives. Shuddering occasionally with the flash of a television image or newspaper headline, otherwise they will remain the same in their souls.

They will have made a decision whether they know it or not. A decision NOT to let this tragedy trigger a destiny change. A decision NOT to seek the solution, the answer to the only life-or-death question.

You lived, but you’re not guaranteed how long. What then? I wish that question was blaring from TVs and newspapers and blogs: What then?

How many other people died in those few hours of Monday morning? How many from murder? How many from accidents? How many from disease? How many from starvation? Where is the horror over that?

Too many human beings have become satisfied and complacent, or hopeless and apathetic. Even Christians.

My prayer is that the Christian world will feel the grief Jesus felt when he cried over Jerusalem, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, but you were not willing.”

That we won’t just feel it and forget it, we’ll do something about it.

Why?

That question is being asked this week by wounded students at Virginia Tech.  Relatives and friends of dead students.  University faculty and staff.  Law enforcement officers.  Every news person with a microphone and camera is seeking someone on campus to ask how they feel and what they think, but most of all, why.  Why did he do it?

Of course, other “why” questions follow that one.  Why weren’t people warned sooner, why weren’t classes cancelled, why wasn’t the campus shut down.  Why wasn’t the shooter stopped before he killed so many.

Jesus answered this question in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;  I have come that they may have life, and have to the full.”  (NIV)

There is a thief, an enemy who hates people.  He hates ALL human beings because God made them and loves them.  Stealing, killing and destroying is his nature.  He’s had lots of practice and he does those things very well.

The main thing he wants to steal is faith.  If he can’t steal faith directly he will nullify it by stealing belongings, health, jobs or relationships, introducing fear and doubt into the situation.  He will do whatever it takes to prevent faith from working.

If he can, he will kill people, and obviously many times he can.  He will do it with sickness, disease, natural disasters or accidents.  And he will do it by stirring up anger, jealousy, hatred and murder in the heart of a human being.

If he can’t steal faith or kill people, he’ll destroy anything else he can so they can’t be used to nurture faith or preserve life.  He’ll destroy the truth with lies, stir up strife in marriages, families, neighborhoods and nations.  He will turn misunderstandings into full-blown wars.

Many people think this enemy is imaginary and that’s the way he likes it.  You sure won’t defend against an enemy you don’t think is real.  It’s never a mystery to me when I see news stories about murder, not even mass murder.  It’s just another day on the job for the enemy of our souls.

“Why?” is the wrong question.  What can be done about it, is the right question.  Changing people from the inside out is the first step, which is what Jesus came to do.  That’s the kind of news I’d like to see more of in the headlines.

Do you hear what I hear?

Sitting at my computer this afternoon reading e-mail, news, googling stuff, and thinking about what to write for what (newspaper, blogs, my own use), I hear little sounds that make me think for a split second that Tim is there at his desk like always.

His office is down the hall from mine, around the corner and through the living room, in what was designed as the sun room here at our condo. His chair squeaked occasionally when he moved, and when he turned over a tape in his talking book machine it made a little click that I could hear. And of course the sound of his voice as he talked on the telephone was sort of a murmuring in the background, a constant in my life, like Tim’s love for me. He cherished me. Nobody else except the Lord has ever done that, and Tim did it so very well.

I smile, then realize that he’s actually not physically at his desk, he’s somewhere else quite different. He’s skiing on snow or water, skating on pavement or ice, sailing or cruising on lake or ocean, singing with one of the choirs in a heavenly rehearsal room, worshiping the Father in one of heaven’s majestic cathedrals or in even in the Throne Room itself, or perhaps sitting with Jesus and a group of disciples on a hillside, learning the Word and doing it. Or he’s being instructed and practicing with some of his new capabilities, abilities he will need when he returns with Jesus to the earth.

But little sounds bring him back here to me now and then, those little creaking-chair, clicking-machine sounds, and the Lord is letting me know I’m not really alone here. To the world it might look like it, but Tim, Jesus and I know better. Heaven is not far away; it’s another dimension that is invisible to me, but I believe it’s very close indeed.

The days left to us in this age are getting fewer, the Lord seems to tell me. Tim and the other believers in heaven are preparing for the time they return with Jesus to the earth. Sometimes I think many of us still on earth, still unchanged, we’re so complacent that we’re like the frog in the pot of cold water: the water is being heated up and we don’t even know we’re being cooked.

The earth will be drastically changed before the millennium reign of Jesus begins, devastated and destroyed and in need of a great deal of repair and restoring. There will be many unchanged and unsaved people still alive here on this planet, in desperate need. The believers in heaven are even now preparing for that thousand years of work, but we who are still here, what are we doing to prepare?

Lord, help me be more aware and more obedient. Aware of what I should be doing to prepare for those days, who I should speak a word to, encourage, inspire, instruct, intercede for!

Don’t sweat the small stuff

After several days of trying to do business banking online and getting nowhere with the bank’s computer program, I decided to speak to a human being.  No help, she said according to their records I wasn’t entitled to sign checks for my very own business, despite the fact that I’m the only person here and the only person who has signed checks here for the past eleven years…

I told her that.  She decided to transfer my call to a second person who could straighten things out, put me on hold and somehow disconnected my call altogether.

I waited a day before calling back, got a second lady, went through the entire situation with her and got put on hold again while she researched my account.  After three minutes a third woman came on, asking “Can I help you?”  What happened to the lady I was holding for, I wondered.  Apparently she had “accidentally” dropped my call out of the system.

Trying to be patient, a hard thing with me, I reiterated the problem.  She could help me, this lady claimed — wait just a moment, I will get things straight for you, take the wrong name off your account and be sure your name is on, okay, all fixed, she said.  Then she hung up.  I went back online using the new information she had given me and nothing worked.  Again.

So I gave up and decided to change banks, which is what I should have done in the first place, probably.  When I discovered they had not updated my business records in eleven years, despite the fact that I was told a month ago that everything was up to date on my account, that should have been a clue that things aren’t exactly efficient over there.
So I have started the process of moving the drafts (so convenient, drafts) and tomorrow morning I will open a brand new business account elsewhere.

I went back online and notified the bank that I was giving up on trying to do online business with them and would be moving my account as soon as practical.  So of course this morning I got a phone call from a man at the bank, wanting to help me learn how to do online banking.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I told him thanks but no thanks, I was going to be moving my account, told him why, and said that I appreciated his call anyway.  Really — help me learn?  Somebody needs to help their customer service staff learn.
I’m trying not to lose my cool over “small stuff,” really I am.  Tim used to do all this banking stuff and he was very good at it.  He was good at being patient, too.  I am not very good at it yet but I’m trying.

Lord, help me with all this, please.

Resurrection Day

There are a lot of people in heaven who have already been resurrected from the dead… that is, they already have a new physical body combined with their spiritual body. Enoch walked with God and was not, the Bible says. I take that to mean he was taken bodily into heaven without having to die and be resurrected first. Somebody must have been there to record that, else why would it be worded that way?

So was Elijah. And we know Elisha saw him as he left, being escorted in a grand fashion. Then, in the book of Matthew we read about the many, many saints who were raised from the dead along with Jesus, and who were seen by a lot of people in Jerusalem and no doubt other places before they went along with Jesus on into heaven. I believe these were the saints who believed in advance in the Messiah who was to come. The cream of the crop of the Old Testament, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, the prophets, and quite probably John the Baptist.

So, there are quite a number of people in heaven who already have a physical body. Wonder how their abilities, their activities, their assignments differ from those who only have spiritual bodies and no flesh?

Questions like these come up regularly in my conversations with Tim and the Lord in the last several months. I do receive answers to my questions, but those are recorded in a quite private place for the most part.

But about those believers in heaven who have physical bodies already… sometimes you read about “angel” appearances on earth, bringing warnings or encouragement or instruction or assistance in some form. Because they appear and disappear, they are believed to be angels and not humans. But Jesus appeared and disappeared at will, after his resurrection. These appearances may just be incognito earth-assignments for David, or Abraham, or Daniel. Who would recognize them these days? Of course, they may also be angels.

Sometimes I am envious of all the exciting, interesting, challenging, wonderful activities Tim is involved in now, but the Lord reminds me that patience is a virtue and reassures me that my future assignments here on earth will blessed, interesting, challenging, and are necessary.

Multi-tasking is a good thing…

Starting laundry, preparing breakfast, watching (listening) to the TV news, reading the final chapter of Dr. Dobson’s newest version of “Dare to Discipline” so I can give it to my stepdaughter this afternoon, petting one or both cats, gathering trash, never leaving a room without taking something to put up, etc., etc. — did I mention folding the finished laundry, eating the breakfast standing up so I can read the last of the newspaper without a kitty in my lap, AND answering the phone?  Twice?

And all this while praying, praising, thanking and appreciating the Lord, listening to His voice as He gives me instructions for the day,  either things to do, things to say, or things to pray.  Hmmmm.  It promises to be a busy Good Friday.

Now, over to the piano to continue learning the music for the Easter choir, my first practice with them is tomorrow.  I’m “pinch hitting” for the regular choir pianist who is ill.  Father, this will take a real miracle!

Retirement?!

After several years Trinity has a choir again, not just for this Easter Sunday, but hopefully continuing on.  However, Mark has become very ill so Julian Young asked if I would fill in for him on the piano, with practices Saturday and Sunday morning.  Of course I told him I would.  He’s to bring me the music this evening.

Then this morning Keith emailed me an invitation to return to the worship team on a regular basis — I thanked him but declined.  I hope to be able to “refire” or “retread” in my retirement, with other forms of ministry opportunities.

I did tell him I’d play for communion, offertories, and fill in when someone was out occasionally, just as I have been doing these last few months.

The Lord told me to WRITE some years ago, so that’s what I am trying to do more and more, meaning less and less time for other things.

Threads of my life…

The caption on the poster reads, “Don’t pray for an easy life, pray to be a strong person.”

Tim was my whole life for more than 23 years, next to the Lord. Now he has a brand new life, healthy, strong, vibrant, energetic, full of joy, and the Lord is leading me in an entirely different direction. My prayer for myself is that I’ll see and hear the Lord’s voice clearly and go where he directs.