When I was a teenager, I started playing keyboard by ear. I could hear a song to the point where it stayed in my head, and I was able to reproduce it on the keyboard. I remember one time, I had finished playing My Heart Will Go On, from the movie Titanic, and a friend of the family had asked me when I had learned the song. My reply was "Just now." I had played it note for note without a single mistake just then, for the first time. I had even won a talent show when I was in the 4-H for my own composition, The Horror Hymn.
However, I'm not here to toot my own horn. I know a lot of people who are way better than I am. One day, I had gone over a friend's house and played some songs on his Korg synthesizer. He asked if I always played with my eyes closed. It was something that I had never thought about before. I did tend to close my eyes while playing songs. The reply was simple.
"Sometimes the eyes can deceive what the heart knows."
When I play music, I have to feel it in my heart. Sometimes by looking at my hands, I mess up. It's like my eyes are telling my hands to do the wrong thing. However, if I listen to my heart, I don't. It wasn't until recently that I had realized that the same quote that I had said many years before applies to being a Christian. Too many times we allow what we see on the surface to stop us from being true Christians.
How many times have we not approached someone in church or on the street, or anywhere to share the love of God just based on someone's appearance? Doesn't God love them too? Shouldn't we let them know it? Shouldn't we be the examples? How many who are lost can be found if we share in the love of God?
We can never know the heart of another. There are always questions. Does this person know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Does this person even know about the love that led to the sacrifice for our sins so we may have eternal life? Do we approach, or do we judge? Do we welcome, or do we exclude?
Think about it. Can we be effective as Christians if we shun someone because they didn't "dress properly for church?" What is the proper "dress code" for church? If you don't know the answer to the question, read your Bible. Jesus came to those as they were, not as they should be. He had spent more time with the outcasts of society than with the "in" crowd. The Pharisees were the ones that the society held up as the pious, as the examples of what it meant to be righteous. Jesus was quick to point out that they weren't referring to them as "whitewashed tombs" or that they clean the outside of the cup but keep the inside dirty. He had called them a "brood of vipers." They were only concerned with what was on the outside and boasted of their false righteousness.
Who do you think should join us as fellow Christians in the adoptive family of God? Who does God want there? Everyone! God loves everyone. Do not let your eyes deceive you. Your heart knows. Use it.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Written on November 2, 2009
"I got to go. My dad is calling me."
Funny how the significance of that statement took me ten years to realize its truth. Ten years ago tonight, those were the last words that my mom had spoken to my dad. Immediately after, her heart stopped, and she breathed her last breath. The medical staff tried to revive her, but failed. Dead from sepsis, brought on by gangrene, a complication of her diabetes.
I had arrived well after that moment. There was her body. A tube still protruding from her mouth. One less leg than I had last seen her when she was alive. Quite a different image of the woman I knew for my 29 years.
My mom had grown up in a large, poor family. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic. Her dad, the only one who had shown her love. He was golden gloves boxer, and he taught her how to fight. He had died when she was 18, and her aunt took over raising her at that point. Her hobby as a teen, she had told me, was beating up Pagan motorcycle gang members. She was tough, a warrior, and she expected her son to be tough too.
She had succeeded in that. For me to even admit that I'm in pain, it would be considered crippling for most people. Even after that time I was hit by a car at 16, I had walked home, pushing my mangled bike for blocks while bleeding to get back home. I have chronic pain that most people don't know I have. I just deal with it, forgetting it's there most of the time.
However, this isn't about me. It's not even about my mom on the 10th anniversary of her going home. You see, I was driving home today and had an epiphany about my mom's final words. When it hit me, I couldn't stop crying. Yes, I do miss her, and maybe that is part of the reason, but most of it was joy. It was like the meaning of those words were hidden from me for ten years. Then it hit me at that moment. The words spoken, and the truth behind them. Put together as one for the first time. Can you see the meaning?
For ten years I had gone on thinking that she was talking about her dad. I thought it was her dad, who had loved her as his child, who was calling her. Then I thought about it, and it became clear. How many times have we said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven?" The word that had been used by Jesus was aba or abba, depending on how you want to spell it. It's a more affectionate term, like daddy.
Jesus had mended that relationship between us and our Heavenly Father. We can call Him "Dad" now through Jesus. He was calling her home. Personally. Yes, PERSONALLY. We can have this personal relationship with God now. There it was; put before me. So obvious now. God in the flesh came down from Heaven to sacrifice Himself for us. It's not us as a collective. It's us as individuals, by name.
"I got to go, my dad is calling me."
Someday, He wants to call us all home, to be with Him, to be loved by Him, for eternity.
Amen (So be it!)
Funny how the significance of that statement took me ten years to realize its truth. Ten years ago tonight, those were the last words that my mom had spoken to my dad. Immediately after, her heart stopped, and she breathed her last breath. The medical staff tried to revive her, but failed. Dead from sepsis, brought on by gangrene, a complication of her diabetes.
I had arrived well after that moment. There was her body. A tube still protruding from her mouth. One less leg than I had last seen her when she was alive. Quite a different image of the woman I knew for my 29 years.
My mom had grown up in a large, poor family. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic. Her dad, the only one who had shown her love. He was golden gloves boxer, and he taught her how to fight. He had died when she was 18, and her aunt took over raising her at that point. Her hobby as a teen, she had told me, was beating up Pagan motorcycle gang members. She was tough, a warrior, and she expected her son to be tough too.
She had succeeded in that. For me to even admit that I'm in pain, it would be considered crippling for most people. Even after that time I was hit by a car at 16, I had walked home, pushing my mangled bike for blocks while bleeding to get back home. I have chronic pain that most people don't know I have. I just deal with it, forgetting it's there most of the time.
However, this isn't about me. It's not even about my mom on the 10th anniversary of her going home. You see, I was driving home today and had an epiphany about my mom's final words. When it hit me, I couldn't stop crying. Yes, I do miss her, and maybe that is part of the reason, but most of it was joy. It was like the meaning of those words were hidden from me for ten years. Then it hit me at that moment. The words spoken, and the truth behind them. Put together as one for the first time. Can you see the meaning?
For ten years I had gone on thinking that she was talking about her dad. I thought it was her dad, who had loved her as his child, who was calling her. Then I thought about it, and it became clear. How many times have we said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven?" The word that had been used by Jesus was aba or abba, depending on how you want to spell it. It's a more affectionate term, like daddy.
Jesus had mended that relationship between us and our Heavenly Father. We can call Him "Dad" now through Jesus. He was calling her home. Personally. Yes, PERSONALLY. We can have this personal relationship with God now. There it was; put before me. So obvious now. God in the flesh came down from Heaven to sacrifice Himself for us. It's not us as a collective. It's us as individuals, by name.
"I got to go, my dad is calling me."
Someday, He wants to call us all home, to be with Him, to be loved by Him, for eternity.
Amen (So be it!)
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