Precious Memories--Places of Grace

Who and what do you remember from your childhood? Adults who influenced and loved you? Kids down the street who played in your yard? Teachers and schoolyards? Birthday parties and sleepovers? Relatives now gone? Friends who tragically died too young?

A childhood friend recently created a Facebook page to record memories from our neighborhood elementary school. The stories being posted take me back to events almost forgotten and people of long ago, the majority of whom have not been a part of my life for decades.

Untangling Life's Knotty Messes

Last night I discovered that the yarn on one edge of my throw blanket was knotted together. The individual pieces were tangled instead of loosely hanging as designed. The other side was completely free from problems, but this one was a mess. Some strands were easily pulled out, but more often so many were intertwined that I could only loosen one to get to another. I spent more than an hour freeing the yarn from interwoven knots.

Isn’t life often the same way? We attempt to deal with a problem and find that it involves a whole knot of issues. Far too often we implement easy answers that don’t work because the difficulty is too complex.

The Way of the Cross

In observing reactions to the death of Osama Bin Laden this week, I am reminded that we Christians travel a different route from the world; we follow the way of the cross. That journey is generally misunderstood and unappreciated, even in the church. God asks us for a different response to events in our own lives and those in the news than the majority of people. We are called to follow Jesus to the cross and die to self, dispensing love for hatred, forgiveness for injury, and generosity for selfishness.

How are you and I doing at that? It’s not so easy when it involves someone like Bin Laden, who is so obviously undeserving. But we each have someone in our own lives who doesn’t deserve such treatment. Who is that person?

Cleaning out Cobwebs in the Heart

I spent some time cleaning under my patio furniture last Saturday. There was a lot of dirt and many leaves caught there by cobwebs. It was impossible to simply sweep it all away; I had to disentangle the webs first.

 

I considered how difficult it is it clean out my heart, and I wondered what holds those sins and weaknesses there like cobwebs. In my case, wrong thinking is major. Maybe you also find it easy to return to old patterns of thought, which lead to negative attitudes about others. Possibly you blame them for your own sins and mistakes because of past experience. Maybe you react to someone based on what you imagine she is thinking rather than her actual words.

I tend to be very impatient with a certain person. Why?