JUICY FRUITY LOVE: Juicy Fruit of the Spirit - Part 2 - January 12, 2008

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
Herman Hesse

Since the beginning of time, human beings have puzzled about, agonized over, sought after, shied away from, and bask in the light of love. It’s one of those things that are difficult to define—although everyone from Charlie Brown to Gandhi have tried—but you know it when you see it.
Or maybe I should say, you know it when you feel it. In Story of My Life, Helen Keller wrote:

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding line, and no way of knowing how near the harbor was. "Light! Give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

We have all had our “at sea in a dense fog” experiences; times when it feels like we are groping along without plummet and sounding-line.

Years ago, when I was still a fairly new and inexperienced driver, I was driving home alone from my counseling job at Northern Michigan University, to K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, in a white-out. I was terrified! It was pitch black and my headlights illuminated the blizzard of snowflakes that the wind was driving relentlessly at my windshield. My eyes struggled in vain to focus past the snow. I was lost in a shaken up snow globe with no sense of direction.

Having grown up in New York and Indiana, I thought I knew snow, but life in northern Michigan introduced me to the profound power and danger of all those delicate, beautiful, tiny little flakes in cahoots with each other and with the wind. This, of course, was before the days of cell phones, GPS devices, and OnStar. It was just me and God and a gazillion capricious snowflakes. The sense of aloneness was overwhelming. And, believe you me, I was prayin’ up a storm (pun intended)! How my tires remained on the roadway, God only knows.

For Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan’s determination to reach through Helen’s blindness and deafness was the beacon of love responding to “the wordless cry of my soul.” The beacon of love that led me safely home that wintry evening was God. Sometimes LOVE reaches out to us through other people; and sometimes LOVE enters our terror directly and steers us home.

What fog or white-out are you lost in right now? Perhaps you are in the midst of a stormy relationship, or negotiating blindly through divorce, or feeling deluged by a diagnosis of cancer. Maybe you have been blindsided by the death of a loved one or the loss of a job. Or maybe your heart is being tugged in two directions and you don’t know what to do. Your soul cries out, “Light! Give me light!” Trust that your Harbor is close by, even though you can’t see it. Know that this storm will pass and your path will become clear.

The only thing that gets us through the overwhelming storms in life is love: God’s love. But it is our calling, our privilege, to be God’s love with skin on it. We are the beacons of God’s love. Mother Teresa said, “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” What small thing can you do to help another person hold onto hope in the midst of their storm? Just knowing that someone else cares, that someone else sees your pain and is willing to sit with you through it, is the miracle that keeps you paddling. A card. A hug. A smile. A willingness to make eye contact with eyes full of fear or sadness. A casserole. A ride to the hospital. A phone call. A sack of groceries. A shoveled driveway…

You are God’s GPS to the lives around you.

“S” is for Sparrow: “Grace Happening People” are Sparrows

“Even the sparrow has found a home…

a place near your altar, O Lord.” Psalm 84:3

When I moved to our current house, I couldn’t hang out my birdfeeders fast enough. With all the trees out back, I was eager to see who my winged neighbors were and my feathered friends did not disappoint me: Carolina chickadees, white breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, finches, woodpeckers—downy, hairy, red-bellied, and pileated—Carolina wrens, rose-breasted grosbeak, juncos, cardinals, indigo buntings (my favorite!), hummingbirds, and even those pesky carmel-breasted seed suckers (aka—squirrels!)—and, of course, sparrows. Sometimes sparrows are lined up on the deck rail, chatting and preening, just hanging out, but I’m so busy cooing over the “pretty birds” that I hardly even notice them.

If I could be a bird, I think I would want to be something exotic, like a toucan. Now there’s a bird for you! What a beauty—unique and almost comical, too. But can you imagine carrying around that beak? And what about attempting to kiss my sweetie? Could be tricky… If I were a Hoosier heron, I wouldn’t have to worry about thunder thighs. But can you imagine standing on those spindly legs all day? I could see myself as a pelican, loafing on the beach and pier and swimming whenever I wanted to. But, you’ve got to admit, a pelican isn’t the most attractive bird in the sky or on the sea. Actually, I think I’d fit in better with the sparrows, one among many, barely noticed, except if I were to make a pest of myself—which both sparrows and I are known to do.

When I was a child, at mealtime I was often compared to a bird: “Linda, you eat like a bird!” I was a picky eater and I often didn’t “eat enough to keep a sparrow alive.” Alas, I now could probably eat enough to keep a thousand sparrows alive! We make up all sorts of figures of speech involving birds when talking about the human race. I do not get up with the birds, nor go to bed with them, because I am a night owl. Pregnant women go through that nesting thing—and then eighteen or so years later wander aimlessly around their empty nests all teary-eyed.

Teenage girls chatter like magpies and Sandi Patty sings like a nightingale. Scary movies give me goose bumps. Sometimes I feel as free as a bird. If I mess up, I feel like a dodo. On days when I’m wandering the house looking for my keys—which I would swear on the Bible that I left on the kitchen counter, just like always—I feel loony. Some dear souls who rarely stray very far from the roost might say my daughter, Beth, is a bird of passage because she’s moved so many times. Speaking of kids, while I often had to talk turkey to my children, they are the feathers in my cap

“Why,” you ask, am I spending so much time comparing people to birds in a column on God’s grace? Because there are passages in the Bible in which Jesus compares us to birds, especially those “five for two pennies” sparrows: “not one of them” said Jesus, “will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” ( Matthew 10:29,) “not one of them is forgotten by God,” (Luke 12:6,) and “the birds of the air neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26).

The point Jesus is making here is that, if God cares this much about a mere sparrow, just think how very much he must care about you and me?

Now, THAT’S something to crow about! “Cock-a-doodle-dooooo!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This brings my summer series, “Grace Happening People,” (based on the anagram “GRACE HAPPENS”) to a close, but next week I’ll summarize the characteristics of “Grace Happening People” that we’ve pondered for the last twelve weeks. A special thank you is in order to the readers who wrote or e-mailed me, sharing their own thoughts. I love hearing from you!