What to read, what to read...

Flying is a perishable skill.  That's why the Thunderbirds, Blue Angels, Snowbirds, and the like practice, practice, practice.  It looks glamorous, but it is gruelling, exhausting, demanding, meticulous, exhilarating work.  I don't speak first hand, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

So I sit and stare at my keyboard.  It looks as though all the letters have remained in the same place.  That's encouraging.  Plunking out a blog entry a couple of times each week does not compare to the demand of flying fighter aircraft inches from one's wingman at g-loads that would put most folks right to sleep.  No, but it is my hope to not put you to sleep either.

So why did I stop writing?  I didn't.  One day simply heaped upon the next for an extended period of time.  I guess it's the same reason we missed Christmas cards last year.  One morning it was September, the next it was February.  Guess it's a little late to send the cards.  Well, here July blinked into November.  Truly, I hope that November doesn't blink into May.

Many thanks to those of you who lurk across these pages and wondered about the silence of the previous months.  When I began these musings three years ago this January, my intent was to look at the world around me through the lens of God's word, the only lens that would provide clarity to the situations of life.  I did not mean for there to be such a distance between ponderings.  Thanks to those who spurred me back to the keyboard.

In the event that these pages stagnate again--no promises--let me recommend a book to you.  I'd never read anything by Randy Alcorn, he's written both fiction and non, but his title, "If God is Good:  Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil," deserved a look.  With the drivel written in the past about why bad things happen to good people, I hungered for a book with a rock-solid biblical foundation that addressed the topics of the title.

I was not disappointed.  Clearing 500 pages, it's a daunting book, but it needed to be so.  Alcorn doesn't shy away from hard questions.  He doesn't sweep them behind the bushes.  Nor does he seek answers from sources that shift like San Andreas' fault.  No, he plumbs and scours the depths of God's word to find sure answers to the essential questions of our existence.

This is not a book that merely wades into dark swamps never to return.  On the contrary, in examining these places, Alcorn had to examine the character and nature of God.  Few books I have read in my life so exalt God outside the Bible as this one does, and it does so by highlighting God's revelation about himself in the Bible.

I mentioned the size of the book.  Yep, it's a big'n.  That said, those 500-pages are broken down into 45 chapters comprising 11 sections.  Each chapter is further broken down in five to ten bite-sized sections.  The way he has broken this book down makes it a very manageable read; don't let its size deter you.

On top of all of this, it's not a pie-in-the-sky, unapplied book.  The book is replete with stories of those who have been through and are currently within the crucible of suffering and tragedy.  Through it all, the faithfulness and the sovereignty and the goodness of God shine like stars in a moonless sky.

If you have nothing to read, let me steer you toward this book for many reasons (by the way, I do not know Mr. Alcorn, nor do any proceeds come back to me).  If you have plenty to read, let me encourage you to move this into the top three of your pile.  It is that good.

And stop back by here.  I hope to not be a stranger to my own blog.  I might even get my Christmas cards out this year.

But a vapor

In the drizzly pre-dawn of January 16th, 37-year old Terri left home for her morning run.  She died when struck by a pick-up driven by a man on his way to work.  He never saw her.  A tragic accident.

Late in the evening of February 9th, Kevin went to work on his job as a cable repairman.  While hoisted high in the air to work on an elevated line, a drunk driver struck his truck and threw Kevin from his bucket.  He died from the fall.  Kevin was 38.  It was his son's birthday.

Last fall, Jim retired from a distinguished career in our nation's Air Force.  On Friday night February 12th, he went to bed but did not wake up on Saturday morning.  Jim was 49. 

Remember how short my time is;
For what futility have You created all the children of men?
What man can live and not see death?
Can he deliver his life from the power of the grave?

~ Psalm 89

When we lived in Arizona, the locusts would shed their skins all over the side of our stucco home.  They looked substantial, but pinch them between your fingers and they disintegrated.  How fragile our lives.  How thin the veil between life and death.  We appear so strong, but in a moment...

He remembered that they were but flesh,
a wind that passes and comes not again.

~ Psalm 78

 
On March 13th, my second son will marry the love of his life. One month and four days later, my eldest son will tie the knot with his beloved.  I have not been promised to see the joy that will spread across their faces when they behold their brides bedecked in white, prepared specially for them.  Nor have they been promised to see that day.

For he knows our frame;

he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.

~ Psalm 103

If you have not gone through such seasons, you will.  They cannot be escaped.  What will the seeding of such sorrow precipitate in our lives?  Will we reject our God?  Will we turn to sex or scotch?  Will we withdraw or lash out?  God himself, through a psalm penned by Moses, guides us in the dark night of our grief.

So teach us to number our days

that we may get a heart of wisdom...
...Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

~ Psalm 90

Such have been my days of late.  Not complaining.  That's just the way it is.

I look forward to the morning.

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The ninetieth is a breathtaking Psalm to meditate upon if you happen to find yourself in such a season (here).

Photo by Tyler Pond

Waking up

What's the best part of a nightmare?  Waking up.  No question.

Some of them fade as soon as you realize they were some bizarre figment of whatever part of your mind sets those things off in the first place.  Others linger.  Your heart pounds, and you try to catch your breath.  You can't focus around the room.  Your mind grasps that the images of moments ago were not real, but like cobwebs stuck to your face, you cannot rid yourself of them.

When tragedy visits you, real tragedy, you wake in the middle of the night hoping that the memories will fade like a nightmare.  As the sobriety of consciousness settles in, the images do not fade.  No, it's not necessarily the terror of a nightmare.  It's an absolute grief over a reality that cannot be changed.

In the dark.

We all know someone who has had to endure such waking moments.  Over time, the grief is perhaps not as stark, but with open eyes and a determined will, you get out of bed knowing that that which consumes your thought is not a dream.

A few days ago, a local sportswriter noted that there was a victim to a local tragedy that did not get a lot of press (here).  A guy who received no pleas for prayer.  The guy?  The cause of the accident.

Let me stop for a minute and focus on that last word, accident.  Terri Otto's death was an accident.  You or I could have been behind the wheel of the truck on that dark, foggy, drizzly morning.  He was.  No alcohol.  No drugs.  I don't think he was texting or on his cell phone at 6 a.m.  Just a guy going to work.  An accident in the purest sense of the word.

I don't know his name, but put yourself in his shoes for a moment.  Imagine if every time you turned around in the press you heard about what an extraordinary, God-annointed, God-appointed woman Terri was (here, in case you missed it).  And you were behind the wheel of the vehicle that robbed her husband and children of her tender presence.  Imagine.  Any idea what mornings would be like?  Ponder the utter silence that abounds at 2 a.m.

Few can.  I can't.  And so I pray.  Nothing in life could heal such a wound.  I can't.  You can't, either.  800 packing a church can't.  But there is One who can.  God saw fit within his Law to Israel to provide a place where folks could go who caused accidental deaths, a place where they would be free from prosecution.  This man will not be prosecuted.  He shouldn't be.  But the accuser of men, Satan, will attempt to torment this man to his destruction.  Jesus Christ came that man might have life to the full.  That includes the truck's driver.

Please pray that this man would cast his burdens upon the One, Jesus Christ, who aches to carry his burdens.  Pray that one day in the future he might rise to a day with a smile at the corner of his mouth instead of anguish tarnishing his heart.

Please, please pray for him.