Behind Prison Walls

When Chuck Colson died on April 21, people remembered him as one of two things:  President Nixon's "hatchet man" in the Watergate Scandal, or a leader in Christian evangelical circles.  He was both of those things, and I imagine he was much more, too.

After his conversion (which, by the way, was after his involvement in the whole Watergate thing), he served time in prison and then founded Prison Fellowship, a ministry that has shared the love of Christ with inmates all over the world.  Because he was a prisoner, he could empathize with prison inmates in a way that many of us cannot.  He understood the brokenness, the sense of isolation, the despondency.  He went to them personally, telling them that God loves them, that He sent His Son to die for them, that there is hope, even for them.  Many of those prisoners trusted Christ, and some are now following in Colson's footsteps, reaching out to others as he reached out to them.  

I was reading an article recently about Colson, and the author noted how God is not a respecter of persons.  He extends his offer of salvation to the entire world.  As the author put it, "The worship arising behind prison walls sounds just as sweet to God as the prayers from the church pews."  I think I often forget this.  I feel all cozy and justified on Sunday morning, but I often forget that there was a time when I was a prisoner, too.  I wasn't incarcerated, but I was a captive --  to my sin, to my pride, to my hopeless despair.  And then Jesus came one night and set me free. 

I'm told that when a convict is released from prison after serving time, there is (typically) a far greater appreciation for freedom.  Similarly, at those times when I give serious remembrance to my life before Christ, my self-righteousness and pride are shattered like glass, and I feel what it was like to be a prisoner.  I remember.  And it's at those times when Jesus is sweeter to me than on any Sunday morning.  He becomes to me once again what He should be at every waking and sleeping moment:  Rescuer, Hero, Lovingkindness, Friend.

Chuck Colson walked in the footsteps of Jesus by taking the good news of salvation to the dregs of society.  He has left a legacy, and I am grateful to him for that.

Really though, we are all the dregs, every one of us, and we all need a Savior.  We are masters at disguise, but God is not fooled.  He looks at us behind our prison bars with pity and love, and He waits for us to step out toward Him, and sing.

Like a Weaned Child

I was reading last night in the Psalms, and the few words comprising number 131 gently stung:

My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.  But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

I've been worried lately, enough to cause my husband near insanity with frequent verbal queries, such as:

"Will the IRS ever really give us our adoption tax credit?"

"Will Lilia get out of her big girl bed in the night and strangle herself on the window blind cords?"

"What is the mathematical possibility of an EF5 tornado plowing through our town and pulverizing our home?"

And (to go along with the tornado question), "Do we have every important document and precious item securely tucked away into our safety deposit box?"

"What if the EF5 tornado pulverizes the bank wherein is contained our safety deposit box?"

"Will Iran make use of nuclear weapons?"

As you can see, I draw from a deep well of worry.  My kind, patient husband tries to gently remind me not to worry, and when my worrisome ways grate him too much he simply says in his almost-mean-if-he-could-have-a-mean-voice way, "You HAVE to stop worrying!"

Sigh.

I don't think I lay too grievous an offense at the feet of my sex if I say that I do believe we, as women, tend to worry more than men.  I don't think it's any coincidence that it was Martha whom Jesus gently rebuked for this weakness instead of, say, John or Matthew.  Not that men don't worry, because they do.  But I think that women tend to worry more, that it is somehow more inextricably linked into our post-fall DNA or something.  Or maybe cytosine and guanine have nothing to do with it:  Maybe it's just our need for security and safety that so easily causes us to be pushed over the cliff into the gulf of anxiety.  

At any rate, I've been worried lately, and then I read Psalm 131 last night.

My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty.

My heart is proud and my eyes are haughty.  I think of myself far too frequently.  It's like a disease with me or something.  Whenever my eyes are on me, I worry.  Like Keith Green sung, "Oh, it's so hard to see when my eyes are on me."  Yes, Lord, my heart is proud and my eyes are haughty.  I confess it.

I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

Sure I do.  All the time.  Most recently it involves the IRS thing and wondering if they will truly ever give us our multi-thousand dollar adoption tax credit.  As the eternal pessimist, my inclination is to simply state, "Yeah, sure they will. When pigs fly they'll give us our adoption tax credit."  And then I spend the next umpteen minutes agonizing over the impossibility of dealing with the red tape of government (and, incidentally, worrying about the future of our health care system if Uncle Sam can't even deal with a simple adoption tax credit!).  You see, the worry never ends with me.  

The truth is, I concern myself with things "too wonderful for me" far too often.  This doesn't mean it's a bad thing to wonder what causes supernovas or to ponder the intricacies of the human cell:  It's good to learn and discover.  But the "too wonderful" things are things that I have no control over, things I can't possibly change one way or the other:

Will we get our money back from the IRS?  I don't know, but if we don't, surely life will go on and God will use that for His glory and our good.

Will we ever have another child?  Very possibly not, but whether we do or don't, we've been blessed with one precious daughter, and God has been good to us.

Where will Jerry get his next job?  How long will it take for that to come?  I have no way to know this, but God goes before us and paves our way, and He plans our good and not our destruction.  

He cares for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, so surely He cares for me, too.  Right?

There's a nest in our backyard cottonwood tree with a beautiful, elegant dove.  She is nesting.  We love to stand beneath the branches where she has laid her nest.  We love to stand there and just watch her lovely face and watch her protect her eggs.  It's a lovely thing she is doing, just being and just carrying out the plan God laid for her.  God has given her all she needs for the task, and that she does.  

But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother,  like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Yesterday in church we sung an old hymn with these words:  "Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I've proved Him over and over.  Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh for grace to trust Him more."

I felt that I couldn't honestly sing the words to that song, so I ad-libbed:  "Jesus, Jesus, how I (used to) trust Him, how I (used to) prove Him over and over."

And then the last words I didn't have to ad-lib:  "Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh for grace to trust Him more."

The thing about a weaned child is this:  He or she isn't worried because mommy is nearby and every need is provided.  That's what is so beautiful about seeing a newborn baby with his mother.  The tenderness, the helplessness, is such a beautiful sight.  That is partly why we love to watch the mother dove in our backyard tree.  She doesn't do anything really except sit there on her eggs and be a mommy.  It's a simple, lovely thing.

We used to wonder when we'd have a child, whether through adoption or pregnancy.  I worried about that once, too.  And you can read about that story elsewhere, but God gave us a beautiful little girl.  

I noticed several months ago that I had this bookmark tucked away in my bedside drawer.  I hadn't seen the bookmark for ages, but it tumbled out of my drawer one day when I was searching for something else.  There's a lifelike rendering on this bookmark of a very pretty little girl, about two years old.  It struck me immediately when I saw it:  That looks almost exactly like Lilia!  Jerry noticed it, too.  Except for darker eyes, it's a picture of our daughter, and she's standing there holding a bouquet of white daisies.

I had that bookmark for years without ever noticing the little girl.  I had no way of knowing that our own daughter would very nearly be her spitting image.  It's no theological faux pas to say that God knew exactly what Lilia would look like, and that she would be ours.  

Underneath the picture of the little girl is this Scripture:  ... give thanks to Him and praise His name.  For the Lord is good and His love endures forever...

So why do I worry again? 

Of Bites and Men

My daughter was bitten today by another child at the public library. Before any of her grandparents read this and proceed to freak out, let me take the time to assure them now that she is perfectly fine and suffering no ill effects. She had some extremely nasty looking teeth prints on the fingers of her right hand for about five minutes, there is some broken skin, and she's on penicillin since the bites were bad enough to bring forth a little bit of blood; but she's recovering. Mommy's heart was racing like crazy when I first witnessed the virtual craters in her hands caused by the teeth, but when she started calming down, my heart eased.

To be truthful, though, it wasn't the hand-biting episode in itself that impacted me as much as the ironic timing of it. Let me explain...

Because I am a voracious reader of "the classics," I am always trying to get my paws on another classic book which I have not yet read. My most recent endeavor was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- although I still need to finish Part Four -- but since we were at the library anyway I was preemptively seeking my next literary treasure. I include, from time to time, a children's "classic" on my list, especially if said classic was written prior to 1920; these are often written in astonishingly eloquent prose, especially when one considers such a book was written for a child.

That said, today I had a few children's titles -- classics -- as potential options. One particular of these I picked up and proceeded to read just a tiny bit about the author on the back spine. It was said of her that "she believed in the natural innocence of children." It went on to say that she understood all children would "grow up to be decent, caring people when left to their own devices."

Children are a blessing, undeniably. If you have the special privilege of being a parent, you understand this truth in a radically special way. What a gift. And there is, with every child, what I would call "an innocence of wonder." Lilia is at a stage now where she exhibits more curiosity than even our cat (no mean feat). She also keeps Jerry and I in stitches every day. She's just a little bundle of cute, curious, hilarious, clumsy, wondering, awkward joy.

But she's a sinner, too. Just like me and Jerry. She has a selfish nature, and it didn't take us terribly long to see the evidence of it. It was about four months ago, when she started expanding on her extremely limited vocabulary, that it really came home to me. I would hear her awakening from naps, and as usual, she would be talking to herself. But there were suddenly two new words she was practicing with rabid frequency: "No" and "mine."

Funny, I don't recall us ever teaching her those words. I wonder where that came from.

I replaced the book upon the shelf, wondering, to be quite frank, how anyone with the slightest familiarity with children could be so naive. Twenty minutes later my daughter's hand was fodder for the molars and incisors of a quite adorable two-and-a-half-year-old girl with blonde, bouncing ringlets (an effective, if not primitive, method of procuring a toy).

Her father, utterly mortified, handled the situation glowingly. He felt, of course, though through no fault of his own, terribly guilty for the wounds inflicted upon Lilia by his pretty little girl. He apologized profusely, and he impressively dealt with his daughter through a combination of firmness and gentleness. She apologized to Lilia. Lilia learned what it can mean to forgive. It turned out to be (teeth marks and blood notwithstanding) a good lesson for both girls.

I couldn't help but wonder about what I had read on the spine of that book, especially the part about children inevitably becoming "decent, caring people" -- and here's the clencher! -- "when left to their own devices." I wonder what that pretty little girl with the blonde ringlets would have done if her father had "left her to her own devices." I have a hunch that the next time another child possessed the toy she wanted, her bicuspids would have made quick work of some portion of that child's anatomy. Thank goodness her father loves her enough to intervene.

It's noteworthy to add that there is a radical difference between becoming a "decent, caring person" and becoming a person who loves justice and righteousness. I'm not for a moment saying it's a bad thing for someone to be decent and caring. But let's be honest: There are a fair number of decent, caring people in prison. I've known some of them personally. And they are, or were, locked in prison for justifiable reasons. To be candid, I was a decent, caring person before I knew Christ. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I was one of the nicest, sweetest people you ever would have met. But I was filled with selfishness, hatefulness, arrogance, lust, envy, and many secret things of darkness. But oh, was I sweet.

Another thing: It's much easier to produce a decent, caring person in a culture that (whether we approve or not) has been saturated with the effects of Christianity. It's not very popular to say so now, but we derive innumerable blessings from two thousand years worth of the gospel. These blessings include, but are not limited to, our understanding of right and wrong and how we impress this upon our children. I venture to say that it's much easier for a child from twenty-first century America to grow up "decent and caring" than for the child from ancient Assyria.

Finally, of course, is the fact that all humans are created in the image of God, meaning in part that (regardless of which quadrant of the planet you occupy during which century), there is something in you that knows there is a standard to keep. It's beyond you and it's real. It's what allows many of us to become "decent and caring." That's part of God's grace.

One of my former pastors once said, rather poetically, that all humans are born as this crazy mixture of royalty and poverty. I agree. We possess this absolutely astonishing, unique stamp called the imago Dei. But it is horrifyingly tarnished, almost beyond recognition. That tarnish is what causes cute little girls with ringlets to sink their teeth into the flesh of other little people. I daresay my own pretty little girl may someday regard another child's finger as an hors d'oeuvre. Or she'll decide to test her playmate's anti-gravitational properties from the second level of the nearby playground.

We do our children no small disservice when we think of them as innocent little angels who will turn out fine if left to their own devices. The heart of discipline is love. Discipline is a form of love, and discipline without love is not discipline. It's interesting that the word "discipline" is from the Latin disciplina and discipulus, which mean, respectively, "teaching and learning" or "pupil." Proverbs 19:18 says it gently and soberly: "Chasten your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction."

After her traumatic ordeal today, I comforted Lilia. She was, in this scenario, not the instigator. But she will be. It may not involve her teeth, but it will involve something. At any rate, I decided to inform her that her teeth are "not for putting on other people."

I think she prefers the taste of cheese, anyway.

Walking by the Way

My husband is participating in this group at our church called The Round Table. One of the many tasks commended to the men involved in this group is the memorization of Scripture. My husband possesses about as much joy for memorization (of anything) as he does for having his teeth drilled without anesthetic; however, since the focus of the memory work is Scripture, and since my husband is a man of God who loves the Word of God, he willingly sets his mind and heart to work for this task every week.

One of the recent verses for memory was from Deuteronomy: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes."

One night he practiced this verse with me, and it led into a conversation about the loveliness of those words and about the beautiful, daunting task of raising our daughter right. What a huge task God has entrusted to us, this bringing up of an actual human being! Really, it staggers the mind: I can barely get through the first ten minutes of a day without inwardly cursing the advance of years upon my morning face, or without struggling to think of something other than myself for five straight seconds. As much as I love my husband, I have the faintest, sneaking suspicion that he also deals with (yes, it's true) sin. Yet God entrusts us with this actual little person, whom we are to teach and instruct, from the heart, about Himself, and whom we are to guide in the ways of rightness and justice.

Yikes!

I'm so afraid of failing.

Relief attends me when I remember that God is mindful I am but dust: He knows I won't perform this task perfectly; He is good enough to meet me where I am, to give me His perfect, precious Word, and to offer me wisdom when I ask for it in faith.

So we're walking by the way together, as a family, and it is a joy, I must confess. Before we eat, we give thanks for what God has given. During the day, we try to teach her about God's character: "We should be kind to others because God is kind to us." We try to read to her from His Word (sometimes this means reading from the "toddler version"), and we get to tell her how precious the Bible is: "It comes from God and tells us about who He is, about who we are, and about what Jesus has done for us." As we walk outside together, we ask her to name the different objects in nature, and we tell her of God's power and creativity, and how He also made us. And before Jerry puts her down to sleep each night, he prays with her. For her. We pray over her life.

It's a daunting, joyful task.

She's already changing so much, no longer a baby, but an official "little girl." The days pass so quickly, one upon the next, and the time is ours for the taking. It won't be given again -- we must use it wisely or waste it. And as we strive to use it wisely, as we seek to instruct our daughter in the things which will last, we get the reward of seeing the fruit of our work, even in the tiniest ways:

There was the time she bowed her head to give thanks for a meal, beating Jerry and I to the task! There was the time she opened her little Bible and found the page about the birth of Christ, pointing to the baby Jesus. There was the time when, of all the books to choose from, she wanted us to read from her bible storybook. And the time recently when, as I prayed aloud for Jerry one morning, she joined me, mumbling words only she and God knew with her little head bent to the ground.

Those moments are gold to me. They're so small in a way, but then, so is she. I don't expect her to recite the Nicene Creed, or to wax theological about the Pauline letters, or to offer me a description of the trinity of God (at least not until she's five). *smile* It's those tiny, little, adorable ways she shows -- God shows -- she's learning, in the most basic of ways, about Truth. What a gift that is!

Before God gave her to us, Jerry and I knew one thing: If we ever had a child, we would do our utmost, from the heart, to instruct him or her in the ways of God. We knew (and still know) we wouldn't do this perfectly. But we'd try. We determined that we'd entrust our child to God, as he entrusted that child to us.

We got the child. We needed a name for her. We couldn't agree on one. "The Kid" was sounding rather crude after having her for ten days, so one night we diligently poured over name lists for the umpteenth time.

And then there it was, that name I had always loved and had (for some reason) forgotten in the desperation to find options: Lilia. I said it aloud: Lilia. "That's pretty," Jerry replied. "I like that. What does it mean?"

"Lilia: To us, to God. Or, whatever is given to us is given to God."

Perfect.

We sense the honor given to us by God in raising Lilia to love Him. But we also sense the fear: What if she rejects Him? We can instruct her and teach her, sharing the treasures of God's Word with her and showing her (hopefully) what it means to follow Christ. But we can't make her love Him. Lilia must respond to God of her own will and of His grace.

Several weeks ago I started asking God to speak to Lilia, of Himself, in her dreams. I asked Him to be in her dreams, and I kept praying for that, day after day. About two weeks ago, as I got her out of her crib one morning, I asked, "Did you have sweet dreams?"

"Yes," she said.

"What did you dream about?" I asked.

"Gees-gees," she replied.

Translation: Jesus.