Pollards

Thursday 4/16/20 6:43 AM

I enjoy the lightening sky of predawn. This morning the silhouettes of pollarded trees against the pink-orange sky drew my attention. I thought about the dead branches that had been removed along with the branches that were redundant, growing in the same direction as another, robbing its neighbor of sunlight and nutrients. The pollards stood nearly bare, stripped of twigs and leaves that clothed the bonelike branches that lay beneath, allowing new, more healthy growth to take their place. The severed branches had been put through a chipper, ground into mulch, and strewn in nearby flower beds to retard the growth of weeds and to provide the flowers and shrubs with needed nutrients.

My thoughts turned to the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect it has on me personally and on our society and world at large. Am I, are we, being stripped of the things in our lives that are dead or inhibit our healthy growth and development? Will this crisis allow us to see that those who clean, and serve, and care for the sick, and teach our children are the bones that hold our society together rather than the bankers, the business moguls, the politicians, the sports stars, and entertainers that receive all the accolades and attention?

It seems that people I meet on the sidewalk or in the store are more polite, more patient than they were before. I see parents playing games with children on their lawns, going for walks together, and greeting strangers who pass with a friendly hello. Will the nonessential things of our lives that are thrown into the chipper and turned to mulch through this crisis retard the evil that arises so easily in our lives and allow us to be more patient and polite? Will we set our selfish, personal agendas aside to provide the protection and nourishment our neighbors, the unappreciated bones of our society, need so they can grow and flourish? I pray for that outcome.

Wash Your Hands

Saturday 4/11/20 6:11 AM

While going on my walk this morning I reviewed my memory verses. When I recited James 4:6-10 I thought about the phrase “wash your hands, you sinners” because of the pandemic crisis we are currently weathering and I also reflected on other parts of the verses. Imagine my surprise when I opened my devotional book today and found the assigned reading to be James 4:1-10! Verses 6-10 read, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

I thought about our society and the pride we had in ourselves just a few weeks ago. The stock market was at an all-time high. Unemployment was at an all-time low. The economy was booming and everyone was happy. Then, in the matter of a few weeks, the stock market plummeted and lost thirty percent of its value, a record number of people became unemployed and are now unable to buy food or pay the rent, and the economy has stalled and is in recession. Laughter and frivolity have changed to mourning and gloom, not by choice but because of circumstances. I pray that, as a society, we can become humbler because of this crisis, that we will turn to God and recognize our need for him, and that God would draw many to himself who did not previously see any need for God in their lives.

The pandemic has given me a lot of extra time to contemplate my own need for God. It has resulted in a renewed relationship and a deeper intimacy with God. My psalm for the week includes Psalm 43:3, “Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.” I feel that God has graciously cared for me and led me closer to him, helping me to recognize that he dwells within me.

Clearing Space

Friday 4/10/20 7:57 AM

This past year I have been on sabbatical and I’ve had a lot more flexibility in my schedule. Since I’ve pretty much recovered from my hip surgery I am now spending a couple of hours each morning doing physical exercise, including a lot of walking. I’ve purposely not listened to music or podcasts, so I walk in silence, listening for the voice of God and leaving my mind open to the prodding of the Holy Spirit. For the past few weeks we have been under stay at home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic and I now have even more time of isolation and solitude. Since I have intentionally tried to seek after God I feel much more in tune with him and I have no fear, despite the troubling daily news about the spread of the pandemic and the rising death count. Lent is a time for reflection and this year the pandemic has allowed me to reflect at an unprecedented level.

Today I read an excerpt from Sarah Parsons book, A Clearing Season, that pretty well describes my experience during these past weeks. “If we picture all the obstructions between us and God as a wilderness, Lent presents us with time to clear and cultivate a part of that wilderness, to create an open space in it. In this newly opened space, we may live more freely and commune more closely with the divine. We can transform this wilderness and make it our home, our garden, a place that invites God in and asks God to stay.” It seems that this is what I did and, thankfully, God has taken up residence with me.

Disorientation and Reorientation

Wednesday 4/8/20 6:35 AM

Two or three times per week I review my memory verses as I go for my morning walk. I take my flash cards with me, look at the scripture verse on one side, and then recite the verse that is written out on the other side. I have been doing this now for about eight months so I can go through all the verses in about forty minutes. This morning I was having some difficulty recalling some of the verses. I seemed a little disoriented and I had a hard time focusing on the verses. There were two verses in particular that I couldn’t recall and eventually had to turn the card over so I could remember how it began. Those verses were Ephesians 4:2, “Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love.”, and Hosea 12:6 “But you must return to your God, maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always.”

After I had gone through the entire stack of cards I went back to review those two verses and I noticed the phrases “be patient” and “wait for your God always.” For the last couple of weeks we have been under a stay at home order. The only place I have gone is the grocery store a few times to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and yesterday I went to the doctor’s office for an appointment. Our entire society has ground to a halt as most people stay home with their family and it seems this will continue through the rest of April and into May. It is easy to get cabin fever and it is difficult to simply wait it out. This morning I think God wanted to remind me to be patient and to wait.

I laughed as I began typing Ephesians 4:2 in the previous paragraph. I was trying to type it from memory but it didn’t seem right when I read it. I went to the flash card and noticed that I had typed, “Be completely humble and gentle, bearing with one another in love.” Ironically, I had forgotten the two words “be patient.” I guess I am more disoriented than I thought or I still haven’t learned what God wanted to teach me.

In their book Companions in Christ, Rueben Job and Marjorie Thompson write about how Jesus had been firmly oriented in his relationship with God and had received divine affirmation at the time of his baptism and transfiguration. They continue with these words, “Surely the experience of temptation in the wilderness was one of disorientation and reorientation for Jesus. … Even more the agony of Gethsemane, the experience of betrayal and denial by his closest human companions, and the ultimate horror of feeling abandoned even by God reveal a depth of disorientation in Jesus’ life journey that defies our comprehension. Yet Jesus pioneered for us the ultimate reorientation to God’s loving purpose in the glory of his resurrection. God’s final word is life, not death; communion, not separation!” Perhaps the disorientation I experienced while trying to remember my verses is simply a symptom of a broader disorientation and confusion I have about what God is doing through the crisis of this pandemic. Perhaps God’s desire is that I become reoriented to him while patiently waiting for him to fulfill his purposes through it all. God wants communion with me, not separation, and he is giving me more time to commune with him. The question is: Will I use the time for that purpose?

Unwanted Grass

Wednesday 4/1/20 8:07 AM

Last week I dethatched my lawn. The power rake I used left about a six-inch wide swath of grass around the outer edge of my lawn that was not touched. I’ve spent the last few days going around that edge with a hand rake, removing the thatch, and taking out weeds and the unwanted rye and fescue grasses. The grasses and weeds that I want to remove are intertwined with the Bermuda grass so some of that is also removed in the process. The Bermuda has runners under the top layer of soil so it will return while the rye and fescue only reproduce using seeds. The lawn has been taken down to the dirt and last night I watered the lawn to settle the dust. Small patches of green Bermuda are poking their shoots through the soil and it won’t be too long and the whole lawn will be back, minus the weeds and unwanted grasses.

My life is a bit like the lawn. Over time there are bad habits or sins that creep in like weeds. Sometimes good habits can also arise, but with time they take over like the unwanted rye and fescue, and the important things of life get crowded out. My life, like my lawn, is a mixture of good and bad all mixed together.

The current pandemic has given me time to reassess what is important and what is unnecessary or unwanted. I am taking this opportunity to get rid of the weeds, rye, and fescue, of my life and make room for the Bermuda to thrive. There is a sense in which I feel that God is using the pandemic to force us as a society to reboot, to reassess what is important. I have the feeling our world has been stripped of all the glitz and glamour and we are forced to look at the bare dirt of our lives. I pray that the Bermuda runners in people’s lives, the important things, will surface so their lives can once again thrive in the way we were designed to thrive.

God Meanders

Monday 3/23/20 1:08 AM

I woke in the middle of the night with two words going through my mind, “God meanders.” I immediately thought of meandering streams and rivers wending their way across a landscape.

I live in Los Angeles county. About eighty years ago, as the local population increased, the county undertook a massive flood control project in order to mitigate the seasonal flooding damage that occurred during the rainy season. They built dams and reservoirs in the local mountains and replaced the meandering rivers of the Los Angeles basin with straight, concrete-lined channels designed to get the rainwater and the snow melt from the local mountains to the ocean as quickly as possible. It seems that humans design rivers to move water with utmost speed and efficiency while God prefers that rivers meander, bringing life to surrounding habitats, and to occasionally flood and change course, bringing a fresh look to an otherwise static landscape.

About twenty years ago our family took a camping trip up the Pacific Coast Highway. The road was constructed in the 1930s by grading plateaus, cutting paths through hillsides, using dynamite to blast away mountains, filling valleys with the dislodged rock and soil, bridging gorges, and  finally paving it all to make a smooth, though winding road along the sand-filled beaches and through the extremely rough terrain that make up the California coastline. We stopped at coastal campgrounds early in the afternoon, set up camp, and then went for a hike as a family to check out the local area. These sites often included kiosks and signs describing the history of the region and the local flora and fauna. One kiosk described how the cliff upon which I was standing had been an ocean floor millions of years ago, evidenced by a plethora of shells and fossilized sandstone. It reminded me of the long timescales over which God creates his breathtaking landscapes. During the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the Los Angeles area one of the local mountains was lifted six inches, abruptly adding to its height in a minute or so. Since earthquakes of that magnitude occur only once or twice in a lifetime one begins to recognize that God’s timescale for developing the mountainous landscapes that surround the LA basin dwarfs our own human timescale over which we developed our urban landscape of straight, level roads and angular buildings.

I walk for about an hour and a half every morning as a part of my exercise routine. It leaves plenty of time for me to observe the world around me and to contemplate. One thing I have noticed is that houses, sidewalks, light poles, buildings, parking structures, fences, electric wires, and other man-made things are designed with straight lines, flat planes, or perfect curves and smooth surfaces for boundaries, and are generally painted with uniform color. By contrast, trees, leaves, clouds, insects, pocket gophers, mountain ranges, dogs and cats, puddles and rivulets of water, birds, and my own human body are designed with intricately curved and complicated boundaries and are painted with an infinite variety of dazzling, complementary colors.

Los Angeles county is currently under a stay at home order due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Within the last couple of weeks life has changed drastically. Freeways once jammed with cars now flow freely. Classrooms that were crammed with students are now empty and parents are supervising their children’s lessons at home. Shelves at the grocery store, once filled with produce and canned goods, are barren. Bars and restaurants that buzzed with activity and lively social interaction are now closed or visited by patrons getting takeout orders only, while maintaining appropriate social distancing. Employers have shut down their places of business and employees are either working from home or have been temporarily laid off. My meager investments, meant to provide for my needs and wants in retirement, have lost over thirty percent of their value in the last couple of weeks as the stock market plummets in fearful response to the pandemic panic. From my human perspective there has just been an earthquake and a mountain gained six inches in height in a matter of seconds while my manmade world collapses around me. Dynamite has just blasted away a rockface that seemed solid and reliable only a couple of weeks ago leaving nothing but dust and detritus in its place. But what is God’s perspective during this crisis? My straight-lined and smooth-curved boundaries have been shattered and my uniformly painted canvas has been splattered with unwanted colors. But how will God weave my shattered, splattered, and chaotic life into his intricate, complex vision for our future world? I wonder.

The Bible says humankind is the final creation of God. The God who spun galaxies and solar systems over vast periods of time finally made humankind in his image. God creates, so we too create. Of course, humans work on a different timescale with limited knowledge and resources. In Isaiah 55 God tells humanity, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” Humans like things done quickly and in an orderly fashion but God does things differently. God takes his time when eroding a mountain range or lifting a seabed. He also takes his time as he erodes my heart of stone, one concerned only for myself and the ones I love, and changes it into a heart of flesh, one filled with compassion and equal concern for others, even my enemy. I pray that God will use this pandemic to open my eyes to others around me, to make me more compassionate toward them and empathetic to their plight, especially toward those with whom I disagree. I pray that he will give me a glimpse of my place in his bigger picture, where my broken pieces form a miniscule, but intricately beautiful detail.

The isolation required to combat the spread of this virus goes against the way humans are wired. We are made to have relationships with God and with other people. Being alone and isolated leaves one feeling especially vulnerable, and possibly fearful of the future. Three and a half years ago I met my siblings in Phoenix to visit my mom, for what I thought would be the last time seeing her alive. Her health was failing and I knew I was not going to be able to be with my mom when she died. I was concerned that she would die alone. On my way home I rode my motorcycle under the scorching August sun across the Arizona and California desert, where I saw arid valleys traversed by meandering arroyos and distant mountain ranges oozing alluvial fans into the valleys below. God gave me a song over my four-hour ride across the desert to assure me that he would be with my mom through it all, in spite of my inability to be with her. I sang as I rode.

God lifted the mountains,

He sculpted the valleys,

He filled the oceans,

In his image made me.

On top of the mountains,

Through deepest dark valleys,

In turbulent oceans,

He accompanies me.

He climbs up the mountains,

Meanders through valleys,

He rides the oceans,

Just to be with me.

I need to remember that, while I want life to be a straight, smooth, unencumbered course, God meanders along winding paths. Occasionally he puts obstacles in my way to cause me to change course, a change that will give me new vistas, perspectives, and opportunities. But he doesn’t leave me on my own to travel the path. He goes with me as I overcome the obstacles, as I meander through the valleys, and as I’m tossed about on the turbulent, overwhelming waves in the ocean of life. In the midst of these trying circumstances, when my world is in turmoil, I need to recall the words of Zephaniah 3:17, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

A Seat at the Table

Wednesday 2/19/20 6:10 AM

We had the grandkids over the weekend and I spent yesterday recuperating. While they were here we spent time playing outside and going for walks. Whenever I am with them I act excited about everything. I am perhaps best known for my celebration of water meters and water valves as we walk  the sidewalks through the neighborhood.

The theme of my devotions this week is wonder, a fitting theme given my attempts to inspire wonder in my grandkids this weekend. My psalm this week is Psalm 113, which includes these verses, “(God) raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people.” The God who created this universe is concerned about the poor and needy. That is a wonder indeed. The society in which I live idolizes riches and power, the opposite end of the spectrum. God’s desire is that the poor and needy have a place at the table of the leaders of our society and the leaders of the church.

Today is trash pickup day in my neighborhood. While I was walking I saw three different people picking through the trash cans, looking for recyclable material. I imagine those three people were either homeless or poor. God does not want people to have to pick through trash to survive. He wants them to have a place at the table where decisions are made and community is practiced. The very people despised by our society and who are often seen as a scourge, or as parasites, are loved by God and should be accepted by and loved by his church.

The community around our church is comprised of a large number of poor, disenfranchised people. I believe we need to give them a place of honor in our church where they can lead and show the great transforming power of God in their lives. Those of us currently in charge need to step back and give them a place at the table.