essays 198-204

1. #204 My Can't Opener
2. #203 Wedding Card
3. #202 Overload
4. #201 Cheek-biting; In-fighting
5. #200 Don't Slam your Cords!
6. #199 Lest they Slip
7. #198 Real From a Distance

#204 My Can't Opener

We've had several appliances die on us in the past few months: our vacuum cleaner, bread machine, electric can opener, and deep fat fryer. The new can opener we bought is of the latest design (cutting edge, even). Instead of cutting off the can around the inside perimeter, it cuts around the outside rim. The lid won't fall into the can and there are no sharp edges. Sounds good. However, there are a few problems with this new can opener. It seems to have a decided preference for name brand cans with nice, deep rims. Store brand cans just go around and around on an endless merry-go-round; the lids adhere stubbornly and can't be pried off (good thing I don't have long fingernails; I would have lost them prying). Not only that, if the lid doesn't come off easily, there will be shreds of metal hanging on the edges (I don't think that swallowing steel shavings is the best way to get your daily allowance of essential minerals) . So, now I call it my "can't opener." And I'm looking for a non-electric, old fashioned opener to use on those non-designer cans of cream of mushroom soup.

Thinking about my can't opener evoked some verses in Isaiah 29. This chapter starts "Woe to Ariel, Ariel" talking about Jerusalem. It is an interesting chapter: verses about Jerusalem whispering out of the dust, like the voice conjured up by a medium; verses about hungry and thirsty men dreaming they are eating and drinking--it is only a dream; verses that describe how all the prophets have become, well, like Sleeping Beauties. (That is all in the first half) .

This is the verse I thought of:

In the next verse, the book isn't sealed, but it is given to a man who is illiterate, and he cannot read it either. What does all this have to do with my can't opener? (not much; this analogy is admittedly a stretch.) I'll direct you to a few more Bible passages. Remember the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:27-39? He had been in Jerusalem, worshipping, and was on his way back home. He was reading Isaiah 53 (what a coincidence) when Phillip ran up to his chariot. Phillip asked him "Do you understand what you are reading?" The eunuch replied, "How can I, except some man should guide me?"

That particular Bible passage was sealed to this eunuch. He couldn't open it himself. He needed someone to guide him. As it says in Romans 10:14, 15

The Bible is still a sealed book to many today. It may be closed to them because they've never heard the truth. Or perhaps they've heard, but not understood. Maybe there are too many stumbling blocks. If they've been taught all their life that man is no more than a highly evolved animal (and that science has proved that to be true), the Bible will seem like a fairy tale or myth to them. That stumbling block will need to first be destroyed before they can have confidence in God's word.

Others might say, "Hey, whatever works for you. That Christianity stuff just doesn't work for me; if it suits you, fine." We need to be able to show people that Jesus Christ is for everyone; He died for everyone, after all. He is not just for people who grew up in Christian homes, he is not just for the poor, he is not just for the desperate (although, we must admit that we are both). And this unsealing takes more than head knowledge. In that same chapter 29 in Isaiah, God says that the wisdom of the wise will perish (Paul quotes this in I Corinthians 1:19). These things are spiritually discerned. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit will open people's understanding. And we need to ask how we can help. We don't want the Bible to be like that soup can on my can't opener, going round and round, round and round, but remaining sealed.

Lori fiechter,  4-13-99

#203 Wedding Card

We were invited to a wedding last week. I'd known about this wedding for several weeks, but somehow I'd forgotten to buy a wedding card. Like the man without a wedding garment ( the parable in Matthew 22), I didn't have a good excuse for my oversight. Why wasn't I prepared? I just kept putting it off until I completely forgot about it. Now, this wasn't a serious problem. I stopped off and bought a card in time for the reception. But it made me think about another wedding feast; those who aren't ready for it will face eternal consequences.

Do you have on your wedding garment? Are you clothed in Christ's righteousness? If you've never repented of your sins and put your faith in Jesus' blood, you are not properly attired for the wedding feast. It may seem like you have plenty of time to get your house in order, plenty of time to make things right with your God. But time has a way of slipping through our fingers. And the older you get, the faster it slips.

I can be forgetful but there are two sorts of things I don't forget: events I am eagerly anticipating, and events I am dreading. It is the in between things that are not firmly tacked down in my conscious mind. Salvation should not be one of those "limbo" items that you will take care of eventually. Get right with your God today. Who knows? The wedding may be tomorrow.

Lori Fiechter, 4-12-99

#202 Overload

Our sons are too old to be wearing bibs; that is why the kitchen floor needs to be swept every day. I was fixing supper the other night when I noticed I'd forgotten to sweep (or maybe I'd swept 15 minutes earlier and it was messy again; same results.) I plugged in the vacuum cleaner, avoiding the top outlet by the window. That outlet is so loose that the plug hangs on like a wet fish handshake (ever had one of those?); as soon as I pull the cord the slightest bit, the plug will wobble and the power will be cut. No, I made sure I used the bottom, tight outlet. I plugged in the sweeper and it was humming away--for all of 10 seconds. No power. I checked the outlet; the plug was tight. I went back to check the vacuum cleaner switch: "on" position. I tried plugging it into another outlet close by. Still no power.

The logical thing would be to check the fuse box to see if a breaker switch was blown. However, logic is not my strong suit. I spent the next few minutes worrying if our brand new vacuum cleaner had some sort of electrical problem. When I did go back to our bedroom and check the breaker, it was indeed thrown. I set it back to "on" and started sweeping again. I swept for about 15 seconds and it went off again. What in the world was going on? I hadn't noticed, but the culprit had been right in front of my nose the whole time: our new deep fat fryer (I don't eat french fries, but my sons think that fries are one of the four basic food groups. You don't want to know what they think the other three are. OK, one of them is chocolate chip cookies.) Apparently, plugging both the vacuum cleaner and fryer into outlets connected by the same fuse was too much. Overload.

Some of us are also overloading our circuits and causing breaker switches to flip; maybe we even blow a fuse or two. Christians are not immune to this. If anything, we can be worse. We figure that if we are doing the Lord's work, there is no such thing as too much of a good thing. Well, there is. You've heard the phrase, "It's better to burn out than to rust out". I think that those should not be the only two alternatives. With proper maintenance, you don't have to do either.

[Before I continue, I should explain that I really don't have this problem of overload. My problem is just the opposite. It is as though my vacuum cleaner is plugged in and the power is on, but I just can't get motivated to actually push it across the floor--no matter how dirty that floor is. ]

Do we have to be busy all the time to be in God's will? I found a couple of braking words in the Bible: meditate and consider. These are not high-action, high-energy words. These are stop, look, and listen words. But who has time for meditation? That sounds New Age now, anyway. We aren't in cloistered societies, we aren't monks or mystics. We don't need to meditate, ponder, or consider. We just need to do something. Show me from the Bible that we are supposed to waste time in meditation.

Ah, this one is too easy. Isaac was out meditating in the fields, when he heard the sound of camels bringing his never-seen bride, Rebecca. Moses and Joshua each commanded the children of Israel to meditate on the book of the law. How about Israel's warrior king, David. Read his psalms. It seems he wasn't too busy to meditate on God's word. And of course, our greatest example is Jesus Christ Himself. He went about doing good, healing and preaching but He also made time for prayer alone with His Father. He found a place away from the crowds to commune with God. What about you? Are your circuits overloaded because of too much activity (even "good" activity) from the moment you get up until the time you fall asleep again at night? You need to have your spirit refreshed by spending time in God's presence.

Remember the hymn "Take Time to be Holy"? I'll close with the second verse:

"Take time to be holy, the world rushes on; Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone.
By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be. Thy friends in they conduct His likeness shall see."

Don't overload your circuits today; take time to be alone with Him. If you refuse to put on the brakes occasionally yourself, God may have to do it for you.

Lori fiechter
4-12-99

#201 Cheek-biting; In-fighting

It happened twice within 24 hours. First, I thought my cheek was part of the crunchy pretzel rod I was chomping; then, I thought my cheek was another tasty bit of creamy Baby Swiss cheese. Now I have two tiny white ridges of scar tissue inside my right cheek. I need to slow down and think about what I'm eating before I start biting my own cheeks. But that cheek just keeps getting in the way. Understand, I don't inflict pain on myself on purpose (I would never have made it through Christianity's ascetic, self-flagellating period, during the Dark Ages in Europe.) I injured myself without realizing that my cheek was part of me and not some foreign substance. I thought of that verse in Galatians:

If we hurt each other, we end up hurting ourselves as well. When I bit my own cheek, I suffered too (that reminds me, I need to avoid orange juice for awhile.) Why do we think we can bite and devour one another without causing any weakness in the Body? Those weapons mentioned in Ephesians 6 are to be used as protection against the enemy of our souls. We shouldn't have to arm ourselves against our own brothers and sisters in Christ. We shouldn't be the ones throwing fiery darts at each other. Let's concentrate on fighting those powers of darkness, not in mutilating our own Body. Watch those teeth of yours; they can be sharp.

(Maybe I need to chew on the other side of my mouth for awhile. Ouch! I guess I'd better avoid chili for while, too. I think ice cream would feel good; yes, I'll have a nice cold ice cream bar. Healing takes time.)

4-9-99

#200 Don't Slam your Cords!
(How many times do I have to tell you?)

What do you do when you can no longer plead ignorance? (Perhaps some of you have never reached that level?) What do you do when you find out that you've been doing something the wrong way all your life? This essay falls under the category: "Problems I never knew I had". I use my voice quite a bit. My sons still like to have me read to them, even books they've just read themselves. "It's more fun when you read it." And since I homeschool them as well, my voice gets quite a workout on a normal day. Plus, I enjoy singing and would like to improve my thin, weak voice. It would be nice to be able to sing more than just the same five notes over and over again. (Most songs use more than five notes; except for some of those Gregorian chants)

I bought a vocal training book plus a couple of tapes on teaching kids to sing. All was well--even when I found out I'd been breathing all wrong--until I came to the part about throat clearing. Throat clearing is, apparently, one of the worst things you can do to your vocal chords (aside from swallowing burning torches, I suppose.) The book emphasizes this point: When you clear your throat, you are slamming your vocal cords together, which makes all sorts of terrible things happen. Instead of slamming your cords, it is suggested that you simply swallow. If that doesn't work, you are to make a vocalized "h" sound, which brings the offending junk up higher in your throat, and then you can swallow. You are to say something like "Hi, Hey".

Here is where the book veers away from reality--or maybe I'm just a poor learner. This "h" sound is supposedly very discreet; you can use it in the middle of a performance. That would be fine, if you are a cat, serenading the neighborhood from your backyard fence. Because the "h" sound resembles nothing so much as a cat, trying to dislodge a stubborn hairball from its throat. (You don't believe me? Try it yourself; but first, be sure you are alone. I get funny looks from those around me when I try this exercise; they all look for the nearest exit.)

If you don't want to slam your cords or pretend to cough up hairballs, the last resort is to cough. And so, that is what I've been doing. Now, I've forgotten the spiritual message. Oh, yes. What to do when you can no longer plead ignorance. What do you do when God points out a bad habit you didn't realize you had? What do you do when you've been knocked out of your blissful ignorance? "I didn't see the sign, officer. I thought the speed limit was still 55 mph."

Paul deals with this problem of sin and the law in Romans. The second chapter explains that we all have a law written in our hearts: our conscience. But chapter 7 goes even further: It is the law itself that made us aware of our sin.

The law is good, but we are not. If we try to keep the law perfectly--especially the spirit of the law--we will eventually fail (some of us sooner than others.) The law points out our frailties, our failures, our need for a Savior. So, what do we do when God points out an area of our life that needs to change? We have three choices: we can ignore Him, grit our teeth and try a tough course of self-improvement, or we can say, "Help me, Lord. I can't do this myself." Hebrews tells us that Jesus Christ is able and willing to do just that:

I've heard a few people say that they wish they'd not been brought up in Christian homes; they would prefer the excuse that they never had been taught the truth; then, it would have been easier to have been ignorant of what God required. This is foolishness. Being ignorant that I was damaging my vocal cords by clearing my throat did not protect my voice at all. Ignorance is not bliss, it is just ignorance. (Your assignment for the day: look up the phrase "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren" in a good Concordance.) God doesn't want us to be ignorant; He doesn't want us to be in spiritual darkness. That is why He sent us light.
(John 3:19; I John 1:5)

Ahem. (How many time did you clear your throat while reading this essay? Hope I didn't ruin your day--or your breakfast.) I wonder if that cat-hairball remover tonic is non-toxic for humans? It probably tastes like cod liver oil, anyway.
4-9-99

#199 Lest they Slip

What do you get when you cross wet hands with a slippery glass jar of stale onion salt? (Maybe that one was too easy). That old, thick glass spice jar had survived unscathed for a couple of decades until Monday. I was in a hurry, fixing supper. I picked up the jar of onion salt and was lifting it up onto a high cupboard shelf (when you are as short as I am, nearly every cupboard shelf qualifies as high). Not only am I vertically challenged, I have lousy hand-eye coordination as well. My hand didn't quite reach above the shelf, but bumped against the bottom. That jolt was enough to send the jar flying out of my hand and smashing into a hundred little pieces (along with the stale brown onion salt, which had been stubbornly stuck to the bottom of that jar for years).

Thankfully, the countertop was clean, and so it wasn't too much of a task to sweep up all that broken glass and smelly salt. My sons watched me from the kitchen table. "How did you do that, mommy?" I yelled, "Nobody move! Stay right where you are until I sweep up this glass on the carpet." They weren't about to move, this was too good--watching mommy do something that would have gotten them into a good bit of trouble, had they been the perpetrators.

After the mess was taken care of, a verse from Hebrews popped into my mind (Bible verses pop into my head at the strangest times, usually when I've just done something stupid.) I imagine you have a good idea what it is: Chapter 2, verse 1.

I like the Amplified Bible's rendering:

Wake up! Pay attention! Stop letting spiritual truths just sort of slide and drift past your mind. Even more importantly, don't let salvation drift by you. Chapter 1 had just explained that Christ Jesus is heir of all things, above all the angels, unchanging and everlasting. The present earth itself will be folded up and changed like a piece of clothing, but Christ is the same (yesterday, today, and forever.) And yet this same Jesus allowed Himself to be made a little lower than the angels, to suffer and taste death for every man. (2:9) This is serious. We ought to be careful to:

I sometimes get a little too comfortable with our God of mercy and love. I forget that He is also a consuming fire. He is not an indulgent grandfather who never disciplines His children, (see Hebrews 12: 6-11) but a loving father who sees our ultimate end as more important than our present comfort. Is He speaking to you today? Are you going to listen, or will you let His words slip and crash to the floor? From my own experience, I suggest that you listen the first time; it could prevent a big mess.

4-9-99

#198 Real From a Distance

Fake flowers (oops, I meant silk flowers and artificial greenery) are looking more real all the time. They've come a long way from those fast-fading plastic flowers you used to find on gravestones around Memorial Day. I saw some almost-real flowers today that were even "planted" in real dirt (there I go again. I meant potting soil--or is it "growing medium" now?) Have you ever gone up to a lovely flower arrangement and touched it to see if it was real? I have. (It is not in good taste to carry out this experiment at a funeral parlor. Trust me. Your spouse will frown.) No matter how real something may look from a distance, I've yet to be fooled close up (especially if my nose is working properly.) Why, you can smell the difference.

If you look at these fake plants close up, you'll notice that they have no flaws; they are too perfect to be real. The colors are too uniform; there are no dying blooms to be picked off, no partly yellowed leaves; no fragrance--and no life.

When Jesus told us to abide in the vine (John 15), I think one thing He was telling us is that abiding in Him is the only way to be real (we have to be real to grow and bear fruit, artificial plants do not produce seeds--not even the plastic kind. I cut one open and looked.) We need to be genuine. Real Christians--complete with flaws and imperfections--are more attractive than artificial models of plastic perfection. It is a lot easier to look like a Christian from a distance (this is true in cyberspace as well) than to pass the "close up" test. Real Christians should have a sweet smelling savor about them (even if they've just been out scraping the barn lot?). We shouldn't smell like silk flowers, which don't really smell at all. We won't all have the same fragrance--some are more sweet, others more sharp--but at least we should smell alive. Better a pungent marigold than an paper rose (or a decaying geranium).

You may look like a Christian, but do you smell like one? (Let's see, am I more marigold or tansy? They are both good for keeping bugs away from the vegetable garden. Not so good for aromatic bouquets)