Monday Morning Meditation #86: Of First Fruits, Filled Barns, and Overflowing Vats

During this week, I continued to read further in the book of Proverbs. I have enjoyed the reading very much, and I have found much worthy of attention. I was particularly struck by verses 9 and 10 in Chapter 3. They hit home in an interesting way for nearly every pay day I am faced with a set of choices that include bills, donations, kids (charity begins at home, as they say), savings and investments (not much money available for that, but we try) and, upon rare occasion, some leisure activity (not much time available for that, but we also try in this area). Verse 9 is the key one, in my opinion.

9. Honor the LORD with your wealth, with first fruits of all your produce;
10. Then will your barns be filled with grain, with new wine your vats will overflow.

Reading: Proverbs 3:9-10.

Meditation: Pay days always bring a host of decisions, especially when the money does not stretch to cover all planned needs and unplanned contingencies. Take this past week, for example. Lizzie called to say that her cat, Princesse, had broken her paw and needed $2250 for surgery, which Lizzie did not have. Sixteen-year-old Princesse is an immigrant from Tunisia and has been Lizzie's constant companion through college, graduate school, and two professorial assignments. There is no question that she was worth every penny of the surgery, but Lizzie did not have the money, which was demanded upfront by the pet hospital. This was one of those unplanned contingencies. In addition, I needed to come up with the planned purchase of special milk for Nikolina who cannot digest regular milk because of her short bowel. It costs $300 for a month's supply, and Shane, having lost his job when her medical expenses became too much for his employer's insurance company ($2 million during her first six months of life), needs help coping with the lower salary he makes from the replacement job he was able to find. Of course, we have the same food and mortgage needs as everyone else. So, where does the money to give to God come from?

For some reason, from the moment of my conversion, I have not worried about this. Perhaps it was the way in which I was converted that produced the deep trust that allows me to give to God from my first fruits through donations and by committing funds when led to using God's credit card to help others. I have found that by giving to God first, the funds for my remaining needs, no matter what they are and how impossible it seems to cover them, always appear.

A little over two years ago, I was approached for a small donation for St. Francis Retreat Center, a local retreat center which does much good for many people. The center had burned down and needed to be rebuilt. I learned that the fundraising committee had raised much of the $1 million needed to rebuild but was still in need of $50,000 in order to construct the center's kitchen. After much prayer, I felt certain I was being led to donate this amount, but it would require about 15% of my income from every paycheck for five years (in addition to the 10% I was already donating to Old Mission and other diocesan/Christian charities). Yikes! How could I possibly manage 25% of my income for that 5-year period. Nonetheless, certain that God wanted me to make this commitment, I did, trusting that where God asked for what I did not have, God Himself would provide the difference. The pledge astonished the fundraising committee and the priest director; they knew I did not have this kind of money. Nonetheless, inspired by my trust, they went ahead and took out a bank loan for the full amount, and the kitchen (and rest of the center) has long ago been built. For nearly two-and-a-half years, every pay day, I have somehow found the pledged amount among my "first fruits," and it appears that my pledge will be paid off on time and so will the center's loan. Sometimes, I have had to make a sacrifice of some sort here and there (no vacation this year, for example), but, for the most part, money has appeared from unplanned sources (extra royalties, requests for consultations, etc.) in fulfillment of God's promise of barns filled and vats overflowing.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to thank God for His great trustworthiness upon which I rely. I will praise God for the multitudinous ways in which He helps me to keep my promises to Him. I will ask God to deepen my trust, and, as God knows, I seriously repent those times where my trust could have been stronger. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

7 Quick Takes Friday #37

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

This week seemed to sort itself into themes. Here are seven of them:

1. Reading short things. I did not read any novels this week, but I read many short things, starting with Mass last Friday. There were two readings, a long one and a short one, and I had to choose on the spot which one to read because the regular reader was absent, in which case I often end up reading but without preparation. I chose the short one. Fr. Thomas had prepared his homily based on the long one! He adjusted! Then I gave away the most recent translation of one of my favorite Persian poets, Rumi, the original whirling dervish. His poetry is delightful, and I was able to read most of the new collection before handing the book over to a visiting employee from our Georgia office. I had told this employee, who hails from Iran, that I had recently acquired this book, and when I saw him salivating over that information, I offered to loan him the book. When he arrived earlier this week, he asked if the offer was still good. It was, and he got the book. I told him I would pick it up next year when I am scheduled to once again go to Georgia, but if he keeps the book, that is fine. The poems were short; I have read most of them. Then there were memoes, articles, concepts of operation, proposals, reports -- for some reason, many more than usual this week. Some non-critical ones, in fact, are still in my email for next week! I probably did read a novel this week if you put together all the paperwork and all the topics within them; in fact, it would have been quite an engaging novel!

2. Love. Love flooded this week, beginning with Mass on Saturday. I walked in just seconds before Mass was to start. Everyone was lined up to proceed down the aisle; they were just waiting for the song to be announced. I slipped in the side down and walked to the back of the church to pick up a song book. Fr. E caught the movement, got out of line, met me partway, hugged me (as he would have anyone walking through the door at that moment), then returned to the line-up. At the back of the church were three of my catechism students, deciding where they would sit. Hugs all around! Then, as I made my way to the pew where I usually sit, several people reached out and squeezed my hand as I passed. That is why I am devoted to Old Mission and to San Ignatio. The town swims in love.

3. Humility. One does not usually talk about humility with one's employees. Work performance, sure. Achievement, certainly. Development, yes. Needs, you bet. Skills, yep. Family matters, yeah, sometimes. Humility? Now that's not your everyday boss to supervisee topic, but it was an important one this week. Since it is a rather long story and I already posted the details on Modern Mysticism, I will let you go there if you wish to read all about it: Humility.

4. Caring. Another topic I became involved with that I blogged about earlier this week is the situation in Pakistan and the efforts of an acquaintance of mine in Karachi to help her fellow countrymen, along with the details of how we can help her if there is interest in doing so. Details are here: Come Along on a Journey to Help Pakistan One Family at a Time.

5. Fellowship and fun. Where can greater fellowship and fun be found than at a pizza party? A dozen employees from six different regional offices came to town for some training from an exceptionally famous guru. I grabbed them over lunch to reacquaint myself with them and their concerns, share recent developments here locally, and bond a little. For bonding, we needed some "glue," so I ordered pizza. Just the thing! By the end of the noon hour, there was a considerable amount of camaraderie, which was especially delightful because some of the individuals had never met, e.g., those working in Hawaii and those working in Georgia or Maryland. Great fun, smack in the middle of the week!

6. Trust. One successful way I have found to build bonds, team spirit, and trust is an annual reverse evaluation. I recently asked some outside experts to evaluate our evaluation. In telling my employees about this, they pointed out how much trust has developed from the reverse evaluation, so much that perhaps it is no longer needed in the way it was earlier. People feel free just to send critiques and concerns directly to me or to their managers through the email with their names attached. Of course, we will continue the reverse evaluation. It is one of the primary tools that has changed my workplace in a mere four years from a dysfunctional workplace full of suspicion and hostility to a loving, supportive, spiritual, TRUSTING place where even I like to come to work every day even knowing the number of challenges that will have to be addressed to complete our tasks and missions successfully, given how far-flung worldwide our operations are.

7. Fatigue. I would be less than honest if I did not admit that this has been a very tiring week. Except for Monday, when I returned home in time for our evening prayer group, I have worked until late into the evening every day. Combine that with going in early every. I had several early morning meetings, including this morning at 0730 when I had the pleasure of spending some time with the guru mentioned above. Some days I went in early because I wanted to get ahead of the 1800 emails in my mailbox that greeted me when I opened email toward the end of the day on Monday, Monday being so full of meetings, including one excruciating 3-hour meeting going over line item by line item all of our contracts, that I never got to my email until near the end of the day. I am pleased to report that when I decided to call it quits at 7:00 this evening, I was down to only 883 emails!

God's Crazy Math

Although most of my bi-weekly salary is already spoken for before it arrives by bills, children’s needs, and routine living expenses, I do make donations to those causes to which I am led. A couple of years ago, I began sending $10/week to one cause only. Tt was all I could afford on my tight budget, or so I thought. Once I began the routine donation, it became possible to double it, then double it again, and again. I am now up to $210/week with that donation. I have also been able to add other donations to which I have been subsequently led: $110/week for donation #2, $20/week for #3, $15/week for #4, $12.50/week for #5, and $7.50 a week for #6. Each started out as a $10 weekly donation, then grew a dollar or two at a time until the older ones became sizable.

No, I did not win any lotteries, and I have no idea where the money comes from. It just comes, and I am certain that as a result, the lower donation amounts will increase in the same ways that the larger ones did. Before anyone thinks that I am simply being humble about my riches, let me confirm that my salary alone would not cover these donations. These are God’s causes, however, and God covers them through many small financial surprises, such as being able to use per diem to provide $1000 for the children of Palomar, Colombia. I save pennies, and God turns them into dollars. I share dollars, and God multiplies them multiple-fold. From out of nowhere come unexpected bonuses, a higher-than-normal (i.e. higher than the cost of living) salary increase, unexpectedly good royalties, and, when gaps appear, a paid consultation that appears without my seeking it through a phone call from someone whom I may or may not know in need of my professional expertise. I empty the coffers. God replenishes them to a fuller level than before.

Similarly, a financial dilemma with the IRS left me $11K in the hole with nary a cent in savings in late 2006. God not only took care of that but gave me more –- enough to pay the tax accountant and donate $400 to a retreat center struggling to rebuild after a fire. I figured that the extra money belonged to God and so found a way to return it to God through the retreat center.

It’s the same way with God’s credit card, about which I have blogged on several occasions. The latest need was $500. Last week, on Saturday, I put $500 on the card for a couple in need, figuring that I could expect $50 in immediate return from others wanting to help out. On Monday, I got $90 in donations from others wanting to help. I turned around on Tuesday and charged $82.50 to the card in order to secure frequent-flyer miles help the sister of a friend and her two children escape from an abusive husband. The friend paid back the $82.50 and added $118 to help pay off God’s credit card balance from the earlier charge. The rest will come. I have learned to trust God’s crazy math.

P.S. I just have to add this note for anyone who reads this post again or later: the rest of the money to pay off the credit card came the next day after I received the $118! Yippee! Now I have money for someone else in need.

An Awful Ending to an Awful Week

Sometimes things can get worse than bad. They can become awful. That is how the ending of this week turned out to be.

Not that earlier in the week things were all that much better. Matters actually began their downturn on Wednesday. That was the day that my deputy, who had called in sick the day before, wrote me an enote, saying that he was being admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery for a staph infection that had proved resistant to antibiotics. I sent flowers; we all sent prayers. The surgery took place Thursday morning. All went well, and my deputy will be home tomorrow. Thank God!

Later that day, the senior manager of one of my subdivisions appeared in my office to relate that her deputy had just been admitted to the hospital with unexplained internal bleeding. No cause has been found yet, and he remains in the hospital. Fortunately, doctors are more puzzled than worried. Dr. House, where are you? No flowers this time; this employee is allergic to them, and we would not want to make a bad situation worse. Prayers, though, continue to be sent. Help, Lord, we need you!

Also on Wednesday, one of our employees, let's call her Jackie, checked into the hospital for routine knee surgery. Today, one of Jackie's colleagues rushed into my office, crying. It turns out that after the surgery, Jackie had stood up and fallen down. She had instantly gone into a coma. A quick medical check showed that her lungs had filled with blood and no blood was circulating into her brain. She is currently packed in ice, with a temperature maintained at 34 degrees, trying to preserve her brain. Last night, doctors had given her two hours to live, but she held on. Now the doctors are saying that after 24 hours they will stop heroic measures because her brain will be past the point of being able to function again. The subdivision is in shock. So is our entire division. How can someone be a vibrant colleague one day and potentially a vegetable, or worse, the next? Ironically, Tuesday afternoon the entire subdivision, minus one colleague, Y, whom the others do not like, had asked for a sensing session with me. It was clear that they were ganging up on Y (there is an ethnic difference between them, as well as a difference in raw talent). Their arguments revealed racism and jealousy. Two people led the attack; one of them was Jackie. Two people went along with the attack but clearly had no evidence to support their contentions and were being egged on to trump up complaints by Jackie and her co-leader. Two others sat quietly, obviously uncomfortable, but unwilling to speak up in defense of the attacked colleague. They avoided answering my direct questions. That department has been ravished by clique behavior and backbiting. This was just the latest example. Y learned about the meeting (perhaps they wanted him to learn about it in order to needle him) and came to see me the next morning, demanding his own day in court. It took a long conversation, but I ultimately convinced him that his best course of action would be to forgive them, forget about what happened, and focus on continuing his excellent work. That was Thursday. Friday everything changed. Jackie was in a coma, the department was in shock, and everyone needed each other. Jackie's co-leader in the Tuesday attack brought me the first update; Y brought me the second and last update and request for prayers, telling me that they were all praying for Jackie. At least, some good has come from the bad. It is not the right time to send flowers to Jackie, but we (the management and the reconciled colleagues) are sending prayers. Help, help, Lord! We really need you on this one!

Could anything more happen to contribute to a general feeling of unease and unhappiness? Oh, sure! Right after all the medical discussions were over, a senior manager who was on vacation showed up. He was picking up a gift I had for his daughter, whose wedding I missed this past weekend. I had not meant to miss it. In fact, it was held in one of the most beautiful places in our area, with the reception at one of the most exclusive clubs. Donnie and I were looking forward to it for two months, and then suddenly we were looking back on it, having missed it. I had accidentally left my calendar book at the office. How we both managed to forget an event we had looked forward to is mystifying. I am now becoming concerned about the possibility of early Alzheimer's. The only possible explanation was the need to attend a funeral that weekend and having to rearrange other plans to make that happen. The senior manager was disappointed -- he sent me an enote the following day. He had forgiven me, however, by the time he arrived this morning to pick up the gift to take to his daughter and brought the remainder of the wedding cake for Donnie and me. Ouch! That hurt.

And, oh, yes, all those things were not enough obviously because Thursday we had two false fire alarms caused by power failures, and off and on throughout the afternoon the Internet went down, most annoyingly exactly at the time that I had to brief some high muckety-mucks from Washington on our innovative use of Internet-based technologies. That required some finessing, but we made it past that awkward moment intact. Today, however, the Internet was still down. All day.

By early afternoon, too much was simply too much. People were anxious from bad news. People were bored from the inability to complete their work, given the nonfunctional Internet. People were depressed from the gray rain that filled our atrium instead of the usual sunshine. Oh, right, I forgot to mention: it rained today, rather an odd thing to happen in the summer in California. Indeed, too much is sometimes just too much, especially on a dreary Friday afternoon. So, I sent everyone home. (At least, that made quite a few people happy.)

I stayed late, finishing what I could without a computer. Then I headed home, hoping for some brightness at the end of the day. Donnie suggested watching television, something I don't do often. The interesting show we thought would brighten our day, however, turned out to have a sad ending. Bummer!

Sometimes you just have to leave your entire world in God's hands.

(Photo montage by Code Scythe)

Monday Morning Meditation #41: They Drew Up in Battle Formation

I barely stumbled past one additional chapter in I Chronicles this week before coming to sudden rest at a passage that speaks so much to the world situation today. The battle line described in chapter 19, verses 1-9 is not unlike the one I find myself constantly straddling in my work around the world, especially in my two previous jobs. In this passage, Nahash, King of the Ammonites, died and was succeeded by his son, Hanun. King David, to whom Nahash had shown kindness while alive, wanted to honor Nahash. So, he sent a delegation of men to Hanun to express condolences. Hanun, however, was suspicious, accused the men of being spies, dishonored them, and sent them back to Israeli territory. Thus, the Ammonites became a "stench in David's nostrils." Soon, both sides had drawn up in battle formation.



Reading: I Chronicles 19: 1-9.



Meditation: Oh, how well I understand the kind of misunderstanding that the Hanun and the Ammonites exhibited and the resultant dismay of David! I have felt this kind of dismay "on my hide," to use a Russian expression, which in this case is quite apropros.



Let's go back to the year 1984. At that time, the world was frozen into a state of Cold War between two super powers: the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Neither side trusted the other. On the USA side, we spoke of balance of power -- and we worked on ways of spying from the outside: from space. On the USSR, they spoke of parity -- and they worked on ways of spying from the inside: through seeding informants into American society. Battle lines were formed in spite of the rhetoric of peace and parity.



Most Americans are not aware that the Russians were as much concerned about America attacking it as Americans were about Russian attacks. I had the unique opportunity to be in Russia during the Cold War (multiple times and for long periods of time). I heard a Red Army general espouse the concepts of parity. I interacted with various peace committees; the vice president of one, Pyotr Volkovich, became a professional colleague and personal friend, and together we established one of the very first student exchanges and the very first one between Belarus and an American school district, in this case, Portland, Oregon. These were positive, learning experiences for me.



I also had a negative experience, one that immediately came to mind when I came across this Scripture reading. In the early 1980s, I was one of only a handful of American scholars allowed into the USSR for research and study. As Fulbright and IREX scholars, we were allowed foreign language classes. While I had already achieved an easy fluency in Russian, I was eager to take advantage of this wonderful benefit, especially since the University of Moscow language classes are some of the most effective in the world. The Department of Russian As a Foreign Language welcomed me and set me up for a placement test. Part of that test was a written essay on any topic of our choosing. Since my research project was Siberian dialects of Russian, about which I had already done as much research as possible in the USA, I decided to write about that. I quickly sketched out the relationship between the main dialectal groups and linguistic theories underlying dialect development, maturation, and deviation from the standard language over time. As I dashed off this information, the proctor's face took on a stormy expression that grew darker the more I wrote. As I approached the middle of the page, she suddenly grabbed the paper and ripped it away from me. To this day, I vividly remember the scratch my pen made across the rest of the paper as the paper flew out from under my hand. "A vy shto," she demanded to know, "shpionka?" (What are you, a spy?) While I considered the comment to be a compliment to my language skills, the reaction reflected the thinking of the times: any American totally fluent in Russian must be a spy. (We had similar concerns about Russians.) And there I sat looking at a battle line being drawn up and being very innocent of anything of which I might be accused. I was no more guilty than were David's men.



In my travels and jobs, I have lived primarily among America's so-called enemies. It was not always easy for me to see them as such. When I completed my dissertation defense in Moscow, I said something that people who were present have remembered to this day: "Ya snachala priekhala v Soyuz, chtoby posmotret' na litso vraga, no v techenie 20 let, ya ne nashla ni odnogo vraga, tol'ko druzej." (I first came to the Soviet Union to look upon the face of the enemy, but in 20 years I have not found one enemy, only friends.) That people would remember those words tells me how eager they were to be friends, not enemies.



One of my favorite memories from Russia (post-Soviet days) was dinner with the vice president of one university in Belarus. In the course of the dinner, we discovered that we had been counterparts during the Cold War. I had worked in the US Army as an officer specializing in USSR Order of Battle, and he had worked in the Red Army as an officer specializing in USA Order of Battle. Startled, he gasped, "You were my enemy," to which I replied, "and you were mine." He demurred, saying that he had been no one's enemy, to which I pointed out that neither had been I. (I have related the story, along with a couple similar ones, in greater detail here: Three Vignettes and One Thought about an Enemy.)



After the Cold War, I began to spend time in the "hot war" countries of the Middle East. Very quickly, the presence of similar misunderstandings became obvious. Our societies' structure, values, and expectations are so different that not having misunderstandings would be unusual. Add misunderstanding to distrust, and suddenly we have just what the situation is today: countries drawn up in battle formation.



These experiences -- those from today and the ones from the Old Testament -- point to the fact that our entire world needs to learn to trust. That trust is not going to spring up at the international level, however, unless it is cultivated at the interpersonal level, within families, within social organizations, even within our churches. In all of these places, one can find an astonishing lack of trust among people who are relatives, colleagues, and/or friends. If we cannot cultivate trust at the friend/colleague/relative level, how on earth are nations supposed to cultivate it at the foreigner/stranger level.



That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for holding our world together for so long in spite of our attempts to pull it apart, to praise Him for all the examples of trust, mistrust, and love He has given us through His Word -- and His words of guidance to us, to repent for those times that I may have contributed to the development of mistrust on any level, and to ask Him to lead all of us into a world where people trust people and no battle lines are to be found. Now I retire to spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.



I will leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.



For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Trust

Two years ago when I was teaching a research methods course to undergraduates at Lithuania International University, a Christian college located in the town of Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea, I gave several speeches at the request of the chaplain. As a result, one of my students felt emboldened to approach me after class with the question, "Do you think we can really trust God?"

When I answered in the affirmative, she indicated some hesitation to take my word for it although my chapel presentation had given her some courage in this respect. So, last January, when I returned to do an intensive seminar on the same topic and the chaplain approached me again for a speaking engagement, I knew the topic I had to address: trust.

Among other things I presented to the students, I told the story of a lost credit card on a trip to Washington. I called the bank, wanting to cancel it, but colleagues, one from Jordan and one from Morocco, both, ironically, Muslims, talked me out of it. "Allah always takes care of you," they pointed out, confidently predicting that my credit card would be found in my hotel room. It was. For some odd reason, I had forgotten that I had used it on the plane as a bookmark. The title of the book? Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God (Brendan Manning). I think God might have been sending me a message with that experience!

We all need that lesson from time to time, no matter how great our faith and trust. We need the lesson so that we will not try to take problems back once we give them to God. Why give them to God if we are going to continue to worry about them and not trust God to handle them in ways that only He can -- so much better than we ever can, no matter the amount of worry.

As I told the college kids in the chapel that day, when we lack trust, we can always ask God to help us trust Him more (along the lines of praying for help with unbelief). I believe that God delights in answering such prayers for He seems to answer them, at least for me, with great alacrity.

Monday Morning Meditation #26: Meeting Our Goliaths

This week I read the next chapter of I Samuel. I was stopped by the story of David and Goliath. Now, this was not a new story for me. Even those not raised on the Bible do generally know this story, as do probably the vast majority of non-Christians in the Western world (and some in the Eastern.) What stopped me, then, was not the newness of the story but a new understanding of it.

Reading: I Samuel 17

Meditation: Perhaps surprisingly the first phrase that caught my attention was David's comment that he had no fear because after all he had taken lambs out of the mouth of lions on many occasions. Now, I think I would be quite hesitant to approach a lion even if the occasion were to present itself, but I also know that somewhere deep inside us is a need to protect that for which we feel ourselves responsible, whether it be our children or something else. It seems a part of all nature. Bears are usually timid around people until they bear young and become fiercely protective of them. Likewise, we recently had a local hen hatch and raise a brood of chickens in our yard. (The local wild fowl have the run of San Ignatio by law and by people's protection, maybe the only place in the USA with this unusual situation. So, the hens get to choose where they raise their broods.) One day a stray dog (we have a few of those, too) grabbed one of the baby chickens. The other chicks ran in many directions, and Mama Hen went wild, flying to a roost high in our tree, alternately clucking her other chicks to return and squawking in despair about the little one in the jaws of the dog. I heard the commotion, went outside, and immediately saw what was going on. Without thinking I ran over to the dog and pried the little chick out of his mouth, scolding him for being a "bad boy." Mama Hen was soon reunited with all her chicks, including the one that the dog had tried to scarf up, the latter none the worse for his great adventure, and everyone went on his or her merry way. It was only then that I realized fighting an unknown stray dog bigger than I over a baby chicken was probably not the best reasoned thing I have ever done. But, in reading David's comment, I certainly understand the emotions that propelled him.

In the story of David and Goliath we find a great deal of abandonment of self to trust in God, not that unsimilar to the abandonment that comes, as David said, from rescuing lambs from lions (or perhaps chicks from dogs). I have never had to abandon myself to a situation where I had to literally kill a Goliath, but metaphorically, figuratively, sure. I am certain we all find ourselves face to face with a Goliath in our life, and we have the choice to trust God or run away and let someone else take care of the Goliath (or be "killed" by it ourselves).

In seems like I have a whole family of Goliaths in my life. Each time one is conquered after a little while a new one appears. Each time the Goliath is vanquished by the grace of God and little more (just a pebble). When, for example, Blaine, Ksenya, and Shura appeared in our path to be taken care of, we had no money. God found it for us, including a million dollars for Shura's medical care. The Goliath of poverty was overcome by a pebble slung in the right direction, in Shura's case toward a billionaire (with some re-direction from God -- we had the wrong address; he lived in a different state, and to this day I do not know how it was that he received my letter).

Oh, yes, there is often a Goliath in front of us. It could be poverty. It could be a legal or medical obstacle. It could be a difficult supervisor at work. It could be loss of a job like Shane is experiencing right now. It could be so many things. Were it only one Goliath! Killed once and gone forever! However, if you are like me, it seems to always be a matter of one down and many to go. One down and a clear road today, but rounding the corner tomorrow, oops!, there we go again!

Maybe we encounter many Goliaths (or at least I do), so that learning to trust God becomes a matter of habit. The more we trust and find the trust to be to good avail, the greater and more automatic our trust becomes. At least, that is my calculated, meditated guess.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have tried to take on Goliath on my own or to worry that Goliath will win, to thank God for always being with me and giving me the pebbles with which to win over the Goliaths that appear in front of me, and to give praise for His incredible faithfulness in guiding my puny pebbles so that I know that I can trust Him in anything and everything. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Monday Morning Meditation #26: Meeting Our Goliaths

This week I read the next chapter of I Samuel. I was stopped by the story of David and Goliath. Now, this was not a new story for me. Even those not raised on the Bible do generally know this story, as do probably the vast majority of non-Christians in the Western world (and some in the Eastern.) What stopped me, then, was not the newness of the story but a new understanding of it.

Reading: I Samuel 17

Meditation: Perhaps surprisingly the first phrase that caught my attention was David's comment that he had no fear because after all he had taken lambs out of the mouth of lions on many occasions. Now, I think I would be quite hesitant to approach a lion even if the occasion were to present itself, but I also know that somewhere deep inside us is a need to protect that for which we feel ourselves responsible, whether it be our children or something else. It seems a part of all nature. Bears are usually timid around people until they bear young and become fiercely protective of them. Likewise, we recently had a local hen hatch and raise a brood of chickens in our yard. (The local wild fowl have the run of San Ignatio by law and by people's protection, maybe the only place in the USA with this unusual situation. So, the hens get to choose where they raise their broods.) One day a stray dog (we have a few of those, too) grabbed one of the baby chickens. The other chicks ran in many directions, and Mama Hen went wild, flying to a roost high in our tree, alternately clucking her other chicks to return and squawking in despair about the little one in the jaws of the dog. I heard the commotion, went outside, and immediately saw what was going on. Without thinking I ran over to the dog and pried the little chick out of his mouth, scolding him for being a "bad boy." Mama Hen was soon reunited with all her chicks, including the one that the dog had tried to scarf up, the latter none the worse for his great adventure, and everyone went on his or her merry way. It was only then that I realized fighting an unknown stray dog bigger than I over a baby chicken was probably not the best reasoned thing I have ever done. But, in reading David's comment, I certainly understand the emotions that propelled him.

In the story of David and Goliath we find a great deal of abandonment of self to trust in God, not that unsimilar to the abandonment that comes, as David said, from rescuing lambs from lions (or perhaps chicks from dogs). I have never had to abandon myself to a situation where I had to literally kill a Goliath, but metaphorically, figuratively, sure. I am certain we all find ourselves face to face with a Goliath in our life, and we have the choice to trust God or run away and let someone else take care of the Goliath (or be "killed" by it ourselves).

In seems like I have a whole family of Goliaths in my life. Each time one is conquered after a little while a new one appears. Each time the Goliath is vanquished by the grace of God and little more (just a pebble). When, for example, Blaine, Ksenya, and Shura appeared in our path to be taken care of, we had no money. God found it for us, including a million dollars for Shura's medical care. The Goliath of poverty was overcome by a pebble slung in the right direction, in Shura's case toward a billionaire (with some re-direction from God -- we had the wrong address; he lived in a different state, and to this day I do not know how it was that he received my letter).

Oh, yes, there is often a Goliath in front of us. It could be poverty. It could be a legal or medical obstacle. It could be a difficult supervisor at work. It could be loss of a job like Shane is experiencing right now. It could be so many things. Were it only one Goliath! Killed once and gone forever! However, if you are like me, it seems to always be a matter of one down and many to go. One down and a clear road today, but rounding the corner tomorrow, oops!, there we go again!

Maybe we encounter many Goliaths (or at least I do), so that learning to trust God becomes a matter of habit. The more we trust and find the trust to be to good avail, the greater and more automatic our trust becomes. At least, that is my calculated, meditated guess.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have tried to take on Goliath on my own or to worry that Goliath will win, to thank God for always being with me and giving me the pebbles with which to win over the Goliaths that appear in front of me, and to give praise for His incredible faithfulness in guiding my puny pebbles so that I know that I can trust Him in anything and everything. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Monday Morning Meditation #20: Be Not Afraid of Intimacy with God

Continuing through the book of Deuteronomy, I was stopped -- I cannot say that the action was reflexive: I did not stop myself -- and while I could not figure out what I could possibly write for a MMM on the verse, somehow I could not get past the 21st verse of chapter 7: "Thou shalt not be affrighted at them; for the LORD thy God is in the midst of thee, a God great and awful." The verse referred to God's tasking of the Israelites to take on the tribes living in the Promised Land, and I assume the translation of the original Hebrew word as "awful" might be better translated today as "awesome."

Reading: Deuteronomy 7:21

Meditation: For the life of me, at midnight, which is when I usually write the MMM, I could not figure out what the significance of this verse was. I thought about all the times I have championed a minority group or an individual in trouble. "Lord, are you stopping me because there is something important to say about moral courage, about the willingness to take on the tasks that you give, no matter how large, unpopular, or frightening they appear to be?" I asked. That seemed liked a good theme to me, one completely related to what was being asked of the Israelites and one that reflected their seeming state of mind. But no, whenever I started thinking in that direction, I encountered a mental block. So, I asked God to enlighten me while I slept, slipped into contemplative prayer briefly, and then slipped into a deep sleep. (That happens to me often during contemplative prayer, and I just hope that God will take me in whatever way He can get me -- conscious or unconscious!)

When the alarm woke me up this morning, my brain was every bit as addled as the night before although my body was quite rested. I fed the cats while Donnie slept, and then settled into the Jesus prayer that I sometimes use for contemplation, especially in the morning. For me, this prayer is less an action and more a way of being together with God. Usually, very quickly my concentration on words disappears (as do the words themselves), and I find myself in a state of contemplation that is difficult to describe in words.

As happens far too often, as the moment of pure intimacy with God slipped over me, I pulled back, and I instantly realized that this is what the verse I could not get past was saying to me. It had nothing to do with the literal meaning of encouraging the Israelites to be brave, given the presence of God among them. Likewise, it had nothing to do with what I first thought about having moral courage to speak up and take on battles today that challenge unethical, unkind, and immoral situations we find in our lives, given that God will be with us during the battle. That which seemed to make sense is not what was stopping me at that verse but rather a different kind of fear that sometimes creeps into my life: the fear of losing control of my conscious self through greater intimacy with God.

I could guess at the psychological reasons behind my withdrawal from God at the moments of greatest intimacy, and I might actually be right. I wonder how other adults who were physically and sexually abused as children accept spiritual intimacy? When I do fully accept it, I usually find later that I have had tears running down my face. So, I now understand that verse in Deuteronomy not as literal or even parallel to similar situations today, but as allegorical, educating me, in this case, about my own reaction to those times when I am very aware that a "great and awful [awesome] God" is "in my midst." As much as I trust God to take care of my life -- I truly do for He always has -- I sometimes (too often, given all God's kindness to me) throw up a protective barrier when He approaches very, very close. I hope that this interpretation (or allegorical application) of today's verse was meant to be as instructive to others as it was to me, for certainly I have been led to a non-literal understanding, but an important one for me: God in our midst should not frighten us, but encourage us; we should welcome, not reject, God's desire to be in our lives and of our lives.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for all those times that I have pulled back, to thank God for patience in continuing to bless me with His presence in spite of my reticence sometimes in fully accepting it, especially physically, to give praise for His incredible desire and willingness to be with me/us, no matter how insignificant or even sinful we are (the penitence service tonight will help), and to request God to give me greater trust when it comes to intimacy with Him.

After that, I will again spend some time in contemplation (briefly for I am now working on being late for work, but often in such cases where I have to cut contemplation short, I end up in a contemplative state from time to time throughout the working day, and that, for certain, is not bad).

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering that God is with us always -- and that should bring us not fear but great joy!

Monday Morning Meditation #14: And They Did As the Lord Commanded

All the (many) chapters I read this week from Exodus and Leviticus had to do with rules for living and worshipping, ranging from childbirth, circumcision, food, and cleansing, to tabernacle design and ways of making offerings. They seem intended for a different time although I know that at least Orthodox Jews follow these instructions carefully even today. Perhaps some day God will send someone to explain to me in what way these rules should be meaningful to me. Quite meaningful, however, was the frequent repetition of one phrase in various versions: "they did as the Lord commanded," "Moses did as God commanded," and so on. Whenever God gives Moses a reason for obedience, it is always some version of "because I am the Lord." It is sort of like a parent saying, "Do it because I told you to." In return, God promises the Israelites, whom He alternately refers to as His people and His servants, that if they obey His commandments, He will provide for all their needs. Further, and more excitingly, He says that He will be with them. ("And I will walk among you and will be your God, and ye shall be My people." Leviticus 26:12)

Reading: Exodus 35-40 and Leviticus.

Meditation: The specific rules aside, what all these passages taken in aggregate say to me is that we are to obey God, without question, in all things for one reason alone: He is God. I assume that since God opened His arms to non-Jews, then we, too, are both His servants and, if we love and obey Him, His people and that His promise to walk among us and provide for us if we obey Him works for us, too.

On a personal level, I have experienced both the requirement and the promise. God has given me a number of taskings, some of them quite difficult. The most difficult, however, was to call my mother. I was angry when I heard the words, "Call your mother."

I did not want to do that. I had not spoken to her for ten years. Asking me to call her seemed terribly unfair. She had been highly abusive to her eight children physically, the details of which I chronicled in my book, Blest Atheist, and when those children became adults, the abuse just changed into emotional abuse. Several of them caught her beating their children (her grandchildren) and ended up sending her away from their homes. Most of my siblings were not speaking to her at the time of my tasking.

I have no idea why God wanted me to call Ma, but while I at first argued, in the long run (it was not that much of a long run -- it took me about a week to find the number and make the call), I put aside my anger, put on my "ruthless trust" (to use Brendan Manning's term to describe The Ragamuffin's Path to God), and did it. I did it for the sole reason that God required it of me. (Explaining that to my mother was rather interesting, to say the least.)

First, I had to track down Ma's phone number. Since nearly no one was talking to her, it took some time to do that. Once I had retrieved the phone number, I still hesitated. I did not know what to say! What would you say to someone to whom you had not spoken for ten years? "How can I call her?" I asked God. "I have no idea what to say!"

A very quiet one word wafted through my mind, indicating an action that had not occurred to me: "Listen." Of course! I could listen. And that is what I did. I listened. For over an hour, I listened -- to a voice full of curiosity, eagerness to relate a decade of happenings, and elation. Perhaps that is about as close as Ma can get to love.

I still do not completely understand the tasking to call Ma. Nor can I directly track any one blessing -- I have received so many! -- to the act of calling her. The only thing I can say is that I "did as the Lord commanded," and I am glad I did so for no other reason than that He is Lord. I love being His servant and hope that one day He will say that I am one of His people.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on tasking me for His taskings ultimately bring me great satisfaction, to repent for all the taskings I have missed or done poorly, to give thanks for all the ways in which God has indeed provided for me, and to offer praise for the ways in which He orders my world.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any "walking" together with which He is willing to bless me. The joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the right-hand side of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a week enriched by the presence of God. May you be blessed by opportunities to do His bidding, and may you do that well.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 35-57 and Leviticus or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. Yes, I know it has been 14 weeks, but I am exceptionally computer-inept. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Monday Morning Meditation #10: A Tendency to Whine

Back in the land of the living (many thanks to all for their prayers and to God for His kindness), I have forged forward in the book of Exodus to the point where the Israelites, with the help of God, have left their Egyptian bondage, crossed the Red Sea, and are now living in the wilderness. And now, being in the wilderness, what is the first thing they do? Start complaining! Where will we get something to drink?, How will we eat? they ask. God provides them with water, manna, and quail, but in some quarters the complaints continue.

Reading: Exodus 15-17

Meditation: Having lived in that same wilderness a few years ago, spending time with a Bedouin family, eating what the family ate -- goat, sleeping where the family slept -- on the sand, sheltering with what the family sheltered -- a marvelously protective goat-hair tent -- I can understand the concern of the Israelites. Surrounded by sand, with an occasional plant (Now how did that get there?), and some deep dry channels where the spring runoff had long since passed through the sand dunes, one might indeed wonder where survival would come from. However, the Bedouin do survive. Donnie and I did survive right along with them. (Of course, today there are more options about how one survives.) Each time the Israelites whined, God provided, as He still does today when we whine and even when we do not.

What is there in our human nature that replaces what should be an attitude of gratitude for what God has done and does do for us with whimpering and whining for what we would like to have that is more or bigger or better or shinier or more expensive or more glittery? Why is it so difficult to be happy with what we have, which, in many cases, is more than many other people have, especially if we look at the poorest of the poor on this planet?

When "bad" things happen, why do we ask "Why me?" Should we not instead be asking "Why not me?" Ironically, even as an atheist, I never asked "Why me?" when it came to our children's birth defects. Somehow I knew that united gene pools can sometimes produce less than optimum results, and that is just a fact of life. More important, always, was the question "How do we live with this?" or "How do we fix it?" or "How do we at least make it somewhat better?"

If we can accept whatever lot we have in life, without whining, without telling God what it is we want Him to do for us, and instead abide in Him and see what He can and will do to make all things come together for our good, I think we will be very surprised by God's creativity in turning bad to good, into giving us far more than we would have dreamed of asking, of answering our prayers before we even say them. I have seen that happen so often that I fully trust God to produce miracles whenever they are needed to serve a higher purpose.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep me from whining, to express my regret for times in the past when I have been ungrateful or demanding, to give thanks for His great kindness in giving me more than I deserve, yes, in spoiling me, and to offer praise for the marvels of which He is capable and which He has shown our world.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, hoping and trusting that this great God will continue to infuse me with a desire for nothing except for His presence and an attitude for gratitude whenever I am granted that favor.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 15-17 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a spirit-filled week, and may you find a host of blessings for which to be grateful.

Oh, the Unpalatable Food of Parents of Special Needs Children

I did not think I would have time to blog tonight/today, but it appears that I do since I am up "eating," following a phone call. The call came right in the middle of the night as I snoozed away here in Germany. Donnie, the husband. Well, Donnie would not have called me at this hour had there not been a dramatic need, and there was.

Doah, our mentally retarded youngest, had had an altercation with someone at work and had become violent (tried to bite). So, the staff, together with the owner of Doah's group home, was asking to increase his epilepsy medication. This is a considerable set-back since we had only two weeks ago convinced the doctor to begin weaning Doah from this medication based on the fact that he does not have epilepsy, has never had any kind of episode remotely similar to epilepsy, and does not have a violent nature. In fact, we were quite persistent about making the attempt to wean him from the medicine once we found out that the doctor had tried no alternatives to addictive medicine. Her reason: He is on MediCal insurance (state insurance for handicapped individuals in California -- no other insurance company will take him because he is a definite risk), which allows only 15 minutes a visit and a limited number of visits. So, she told us that all she has ever had time to do is measure the amount of medicine in his blood and re-prescribe and that is all she ever plans to do. (You have to admire the doctor's honesty.) If we want alternatives, they take time, and we would need to find another doctor. However, she could not recommend one because none that she knows is willing to work with MediCal patients because the payment is so low. Fortunately, she was willing, reluctantly, to try to lower the dosage of one of the addictive medicines Doah is taking.

I am not a doctor although sometimes I joke that given all our kids and grandkids with serious birth defects that I have earned an honorary medical degree. Well, obviously not so. I have no idea whether the fact that Doah has had this medicine in his system has caused some changes that show up in violent actions as a side-effect of withdrawal or whether Doah with age (now nearly 30) has become unable to handle some of his emotions. Whenever he is with us, he is happy-go-lucky, and the times that he has been frustrated, he has generally released a 20-second flash flood of expletives that dries up as soon as I look at him and say his name sternly or with disappointment, depending upon the circumstances.

Here is a new wrinkle, and from half a world away I have no way to analyze the situation accurately. Reluctantly, I agreed to have him return to full medication. Frustrated, I complained to God about it and heard this little voice say: "He is my child." Oh, yeah, that's right. I am not in this alone anymore, like I was when I was an atheist. I have a Helper, a Supporter who actually loves both Doah and me. I felt a comforting stroking which I don't know how to explain: sensation without sensation. But that reinforced my understanding that God will take care of this one way or another.

Now, though, I cannot go back to bed. I am ravenous. I rummaged around my emotional refrigerator and found what I am hungering for: a huge piece of humble pie. I will finish that, and then I can get some sleep. Tomorrow will be another day. Meanwhile, I don't have to worry about Doah. God is doing that.

Monday Morning Meditation #7: God's Protection

As I post this, I have an odd feeling. It is not Monday morning here in Seoul, South Korea. Monday morning has come and gone, and now Tuesday is pretty much here. Crossing the International Date Line is a real trip, in both senses of that word. So, I had to decide whether to post on Monday morning Korean time or Monday morning USA time. I decided to use the time that blog readers have likely become used to: PDT.

This week, I made it through the final couple of verses of Genesis and moved on to the very beginning of Exodus. At this rate, I will be well past the age of 100 before I finish reading the whole Bible. Actually, I belong to a Bible Study group that is moving through the Bible much faster: it will only take us ten years to finish. Today I got stopped very early in Exodus: Chapter 2, to be specific. I was captivated by the story of Moses -- not of the man, but of the baby.

Reading: Exodus 2:1-10.

Meditation: What struck me about the little baby in the bulrushes was just how vulnerable he was and how perfectly God arranged everything for his protection and also for his mother's psychological well-being. Anything could have happened to baby Moses, and by the law of the Pharaoh, he should have been killed. However, God led Pharaoh's daughter to have compassion on him and then guided the handmaiden to Moses's own mother for breastfeeding him. The relief his mother must have felt in all of this is something with which any mother can empathize.

Moses and his mother owed a great debt of gratitude to God for His protection. True, it turned out later that God had an immense plan for using Moses to deliver His people, the Hebrews, from slavery. Nonetheless, one must say "thank you" with great awe when God provides this kind of protection. I know because my family and I have been protected by God upon occasion after occasion. I will provide just a few examples, but they represent only a small fraction of the times that God has come to our rescue.

In addition to the string of muggings where I did not get hurt and lost very little (not that I have much to lose), God clearly has taken care of me in my travels. One interesting situation comes immediately to mind: a trip to Campinas, Brazil. I sat in seat B on the plane, and the guy in seat A, Eddie, was surprisingly from Campinas. We got to know each other, and, giving me his home phone number, he invited me to visit if I could find time in my schedule while there. At the baggage claim in Sao Paolo, we shook hands and parted. I trotted out to the curb to find the US Embassy driver who was supposed to take me to Campinas. He was not there. I called the embassy, but it being the weekend, no one had any idea as to who should have been there. Since neither the staff duty officer nor I had the home phone number for my contact at the embassy for the project I was to do in Campinas, I asked some of the locals how to get to Campinas and took the bus that they told me about. Arriving in Campinas, I called Eddie. What else? I had no idea what hotel I was supposed to be at. Eddie rescued me from the bus station, took me home where his wife gave me a wonderful dinner and his young daughter drew me a wonderful picture that I still have, and then looked up in the local phone book the telephone number of the institution where I was to be working. When we called the institution, there was an emergency phone number given on a recording, and from that we were able to contact the director, who did know what hotel I was supposed to be at and efficiently arranged everything for the night and for my arrival at the institution in the morning.

Another time, Lizzie, who was eleven at the time, and I were walking home from the metro station in a suburb of Arlington, Virginia one Saturday morning, when we glimpsed three men, probably in their early twenties, walking behind us, clearly stoned, and clearly targeting us. As they walked, they chanted, "You're going to die." They came closer and closer. Except for them, we were alone on the street and, being new in town, knew no one. As they came within touching distance, I turned into the nearest house, figuring anyone would help us in this case. As it turned out, no one was home, and the three men were lounging against a tree outside the yard, observing us.

"Oh, Lizzie, he told us he would be in the basement; we need the other door," I said just loudly enough to be heard by the young men, and we calmly walked around to the back of the house. Once out of sight, I whispered urgently to Lizzie, "Run!" And we ran all the way home through the back alleys.

The young men did not follow because they did not see us. More important, Lizzie did not panic for one minute. She just kept talking to me about mundane things as if she were not hearing the voices behind us, which I also ignored. Perhaps this was a self-rescue by a brilliant, calm, and collected mother and daughter, but I don't think so. I think Lizzie's calmness came partly from me, partly from herself, and partly from a sense of security that only God could have given her. Had she panicked, as a typical 11-year-old would have/should have, we would probably not be alive today.

Another planting of a calm and collected sense of security occurred with 7-year-old Shane, who was riding a public bus to and from his private school in what was usually in those days (25 years ago) a very safe area. One day, school got out late, and Shane missed his regular bus. As he waited for the next one, he was the only person sitting at the bus stop. A car with two men pulled up, and one of them ordered cute blue-eyed, blond Shane to get into his car.

"No, no. I was told to wait here," he said. "My parents are in the restaurant." (There was a Red Lobster restaurant behind the bus stop.)

One of the men got out of the car and headed for Shane. Shane headed for the restaurant, and seeing a couple walking out of the restaurant toward the parking lot, he hollered and waved, "Mom, Dad, I am over here!"

The man leaped into the car, and the car sped away. Shane then ran into the restaurant and asked one of the waitresses to call me. When I arrived, he was eating a free lobster dinner, surrounded by the waitress staff, who thought he was "darling" and "so cool-headed!"

Again, I could say that Shane was a very intelligent and collected child. He was. But where did that couple in the parking lot come from at just the right time? And how did a 7-year-old, even one in the fifth grade, as Shane was, feel secure enough not to panic? (Oh, and for those who would ask, I made alternative arrangements to the public bus after that for Shane even though all the other children in his class rode the bus.)

And then there was Doah, my mentally challenged youngest, who wanted to go in to work with one Saturday when I had to pull some overtime. I guess it took me too long to get ready because he managed to unlock the door, wander outside, and head down the street, the "street" being a four-lane major highway. When I found him missing, I panicked. I ran down the highway, calling him, but he was nowhere in sight. After only a few minutes, thank God (literally), someone emerged from a side street, asking if I were looking for a little blond boy. Was I?! He had been strolling right in the middle of the highway when some people leaving church had seen him and scooped him up, but they then had no way of returning him. The conversation, which was truly the best that Doah, given his level of intelligence, could manage, went like this:

Q: What's your name? A: Doah.
Q: What's your mother's name? A: Mommy.
Q: What's your father's name? A: Daddy.
Q: Where do you live? A: Home.

They were as glad to see me as I was to see them. I still shake when I think about how close I came to losing Doah, and how seemingly miraculously these people appeared, both to prevent him from being struck by a car and then again to tell me they had him.

I could give two dozen more examples. However, I will stop here with one short, final comment -- not from me but from the interim priest I wrote about yesterday, who once walked me to the door of the parish office where I was the last to depart at the conclusion of an evening meeting. He just stood in the doorway, and so I looked at him quizzically. "I will watch you until you get to your car," he said protectively.

"I hope you have extraordinary distance vision," I replied, "because I walked!"

"Then, please be very careful," he responded.

"I'm not worried," I told him. "I feel protected."

He looked at me piercingly and said in an odd, quiet voice, "I think you are."

In my mind, there is no "think" about it. I know I am. I don't know why God protects me and my family so carefully, and I don't ask. I am simply grateful that God does. I suppose these experiences, among many others, are what has led to my unflappable trust in God.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to protect everyone the way He has protected me (and many others of my acquaintance), to express my regret for taking chances that make Him have to protect me and for any times I have forgotten to say thank you (especially those times when I was still an atheist and attributed every good thing to Serendipity, not aware that the other name for Serendipity is God), to give thanks for His willingness to take care of me whether or not I have "earned" His protection, and to offer praise for the remarkable ways in which He is able to intervene and prevent bad things from happening in the first place as well as all the times that He turns bad into good.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God whom I know I can trust with absolutely anything and everything, including my life -- and have.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 2:1-10 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a blessed week, filled with the knowledge that God is willing to protect us and with gratitude to God for that (and for much more)!
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PS. I did not realize how long this was until after I posted it! I guess that is because I have needed A LOT of protection from God. Thank you for your reading patience.

Million-Dollar Baby

The first bill for Nikolina has arrived. Definitely, it is only the first since she is still in the hospital following the surgery to put her spine back where it belongs. But the first bill is enough to know that these things are out of our hands. Shane and Lemony now have a million-dollar baby. To be precise, the bill was for $1.3 million.

So, what does one do? Laugh and leave the payment of the vast majority to the insurance company (which may have a cap of $1 million in a lifetime). Then, Shane and Lemony will have to turn the rest over to God. Of course, we will help. We did so unintentionally when Nathaniel had his kidney surgery years ago. The hospital grabbed $14K that I had had Shane put into his account so that we would have moving expenses taken care of upon our return from Jordan. Well, the bottom line is that the hospital got the money I needed for moving, and I ended up with alternatives to a planned, normal move, including living with Shane, Lemony, and Nathaniel until I had earned enough money from my new job to pay all the rent, deposits, and the like while Donnie remained "stuck" in Jordan for six months. ("Stuck" is the wrong word because Jordan is a great place to live, as well as relatively inexpensive, and Donnie was able to maintain a part-time job for four of the six months.) Once back in the USA, we lived without furnishings for a while. No big deal. I had a table and an air mattress. My computer was a laptop, and we had a carpeted floor. So, nothing more was really needed. With time, everything got replaced or moved or turned around, and now we can help Shane and Lemony (and our other kids) a lot more than back in 2006 when we first moved back to the USA and its capitalistic economy, which can sometimes bring people to their knees. (Maybe that's not such a bad thing, either.)

At least, the bill does not have to be paid today, which, considering the $4K Shane needs to fix his car which has broken down just at the wrong time (not sure, though, that there is ever a right time, and certainly my family, like most people, have been through worse days) and the current negative balance in my checking account (see my post on Justice or Mercy, as well as the comments to the post), is simply a laughable thought.

God will provide. We just have to wait - and so will Stanford. Been there, done that, as they say, with our other handicapped kids. It does have the effect of keeping one humble. The only thing one has to show off for one's hard-work-produced-income is that one's kids are alive. Come to think of, I cannot think of anything better to show off. Can you?