Shot through the heart (in an awesome way)

This article from The Resurgence couldn't have been any more spot-on for me this morning. It all started when my Loving husband texted me, told me he'd read Proverbs 31 this morning and thought of me. After I stopped laughing (so that I wouldn't cry), I thought about reading the proverb, and then thought better of it because I remembered how awful it makes me feel to read about this super-'wife of noble of character' who apparently never sleeps and laughs at what's to come because she's so awesome that her family will never lack any good thing. 

 All, what I assume is twenty or so, of her children are clothed in royal colors and wake up every morning just to tell her how awesome she is, echoing the words of their father, her husband, and even the townspeople. "Right," I thought, "I'm not reading that." But, glutton for punishment that I am, I opened the thing up, read it, and, just as I knew I would, felt immediate shame and guilt. Ugh. The real kicker? Verse 27:

"She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness."
 

which, if you read my facebook status yesterday, you know is so not true of me. I feel like all I do sometimes is eat the bread of idleness (aka Bojangles biscuits). 

After reading this lovely, uplifting word (note: I think it's important to point out that, though I obviously didn't see it that way this morning, we know God's Word is always good, because He is always good & never changes, despite my feelings about it at any given moment, and yes, my feelings change moment by moment), I had to drop off a pie at Casey's workplace. Ironically (?), I was dropping off the pie because, though I'd intended to have it ready for him this morning, I'd not gotten around to making it until around nine. So, off I go, and good husband that he is, Casey starts asking if I'm okay. "Fine. I'm fine..." And, as I walk out the door, I mumble, "By the way, I'm Not the Proverbs 31 woman." 

 Of course, he made me come back and explain, and, of course, I had my case ready for why God doesn't like me because I'm lazy and always eating the bread of idleness, yada yada. And he says, "Wait, I have something you need to read." And there's the longest version EVER of why the following article is a good word to me today, and hopefully to you too. Read on.

How to Read the Bible

Ray Ortlund » God Scripture Gospel

There are two ways to read the Bible. We can read it as law and threat, or we can read it as promise and assurance. If we read the Bible as law, every page will feel like God glaring at us: “If you ever . . . .” And since we are all law-breakers at heart, the Bible will crush us. Even the promises will come across as law: “God will bless sinners—well, the ones who deserve it.” If we read the Bible as promise, every page will be hope from God. It will breathe new life into us. Even the commands will be sweetened with grace: “God will bless sinners—yes, sinners who break these laws.”

Which way of reading of the Bible is correct?

The apostle Paul explains: “The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. . . . God gave it to Abraham by a promise” (Gal 3:17-18). Here is Paul’s point. If we want to know whether we should read the Bible through the lens of law or promise, we can start reading on page one and see which comes first. And in fact, promise comes first—God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12. The law is a later sidebar, in Exodus 20. The category “promise” is the larger, wraparound framework for everything else. The deepest message of the Bible is the grace of God for sinners. The Bible presents itself this way. The laws and commands and examples and warnings are all there. Let’s revere them. But we can read them with this as our foremost thought: “Jesus obeyed it all. He died for all my failure. And now he is changing my heart. I can read this page of the Bible with hope in his grace.”

I will leave with you the video I've been watching on repeat since yesterday's lunch with the girls. I think the video/song makes sense, only in light of the truth that "The deepest message of the Bible is the grace of God for sinners," because, we ALL KNOW that God is holy and cannot be near sin, but we also know that He so loved the world that He sent His  Son Jesus to the world, to live sinlessly, to die in our place, and to cleanse us from all our sin, so that we could be Near Him. Wow.

Happy Birthday Dad W.!

What do you think we are talking about? These faces are pretty sweet! Happy 57!

All the recent news stories about the US Postal Service and its money troubles have had me thinking a lot about the local post office, and how it probably won't exist that much longer, if all the hype is true. This depresses me.

"Why on earth does that depress you?" you may ask, and you would join a chorus of other people who've asked me the same thing. Well, I'm glad you asked.

See, I grew up in a small town. The local post office, along with a gas station, a car repair shop, and a breakfast & lunch only diner, were all we could boast of. Not even a stop light. Back in the day, we didn't even have the option of home delivery for our mail. Everyone in our town was the same in this one respect -- we all had to drive, or on nice days, walk, to the post office to pick up our mail (and at Christmastime, maybe even a package!). There was no flag to put up for a mailman to pick up mail you needed delivered. You drove to the post office and emptied it into one of the shiny blue metal boxes---the one on the left for mail in town, the one on the right for out-of-town.

Like most of my peers, at eighteen, I left for "the big city" to attend college. I got mail delivered to my dorm, and rarely had need to go to a post office. Then I headed overseas for a year, where mail was marked on the board by our gate, or perhaps some sort of delivery man would drop it off at my door. When I came back home and lived with my parents for a few months, I treasured the routine of picking up the mail from the post office every day. It seemed it was the only thing "normal" in my life anymore.

Now, I'm married, and I live with my husband (Still weird to say sometimes!) in the town where he grew up. If possible, this town is even smaller than my own hometown. Not in actual size, but in the way people know one another. You will find it impossible to go anywhere in this town without running into at least one person you know. And probably at least one relative. I love it, if for no other reason than that it is so wholly different from anything I've ever experienced--to be known wherever I go.

Each morning, before I head into work, I stop by the post office to pick up our mail. I always get there around the same time---a few minutes before nine. The post office doesn't open until 9:00 am, so there's always a line formed by the door, and people talking with each other--about their families, their most recent health woes, what the weather will be this weekend. Almost always, someone holds the door for me, or vice versa, and we smile, and look each other in the eye, and ask how the other is doing. It sounds silly, but this one interaction in the beginning of my day really matters. It makes me feel human, and it makes me realize they are human too. All these people, who have joys and fears and worries and hopes, just like I do. It makes me step outside my own world for a minute, wondering what their life might be like.

So, I don't want the post office to close. I don't want one more human interaction, in an already fast-paced, efficiency-driven world, taken away. I don't want those beautifully weird-looking boxes to sit empty in an eerily-empty buliding--or worse yet-- in the dumpster. I need the post office to be here. You need the post office to be here. For our sanity---to make us slow down, to make us remember that we need each other.

A Horrifying Round of Taboo

From Wikipedia:

"Miner's canary

Canaries were once regularly used in coal mining as an early warning system.[3] Toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, methane or carbon dioxide in the mine would kill the bird before affecting the miners. Because canaries tend to sing much of the time, they would stop singing prior to succumbing to the gas therefore alerting miners to the danger. The use of so called miner's canaries in British mines was phased out in 1987.[4]

Hence, the phrase "canary in a coal mine" is frequently used to refer to a person or thing which serves as an early warning of a coming crisis. By analogy, the term climate canary is used to refer to a species that is affected by an environmental danger prior to other species, thus serving as an early warning system for the other species with regard to the danger."

In the game Taboo, one person has to get the other players to guess the word on a card, without saying a list of related words. In last night's game, someone had the word "canary", which led to a discussion of how the bird used to be sent into a mine to detect deadly gas, before miners entered. Upon hearing this, a piece of my heart died. "WHY would they use the canary???" I cried. "It's so beautiful and yellow and it sings so pretty! Why couldn't they use a mockingbird or something!"

This led us to the conclusion that a book would probably be written about the tragic plight of these mockingbirds.

Then we realized it had, in fact, already been written. So much for my debut novel To Kill a Mockingbird: The Story of How the Canary Escaped from the Mines, & Was Replaced by the Mockingbird.