Fatal Flaws vs. Confounding Conundrums

Recently I've been thinking a lot about how God's beloved ones can be spiritually sound but socially or emotionally unsound. By this I mean, how people who are awkward, offensive, outspoken, rough around the edges, and who can still be so attuned to God that they cannot be faulted, spiritually. Some folks are so off-putting, but you can see that their faith is unwavering, their spiritual discernment clear, and their desire to please God is foremost in their minds.
And yet they may make for the worst companions you can imagine.

I suppose this has been figural for me since my path has taken a turn toward a few people who are difficult to be around. Pious people who are dear to the heart of God. One person in particular is someone I would describe as emotionally rabid, unstable, vitriolic, and socially inept. Yet he has a strong daily prayer life, going over a detailed prayer list every morning with God. He stands for high standards of moral behavior and academic competence. Yet he seems to try to cut me off at the knees whenever I appear to excel in anything that is different than his interests. It is always puzzling to me to be the recipient of his emotionally charged hit-and-run attacks. Especially when they occur in front of others who are shocked by his remarks (not to mention how blindsided I feel). But he would give the shirt off his back for another person in need. A person whom he believes is in need, I should clarify.

Then there is a woman who very humbly and with great feeling discusses her sense of awe about God who has lead her through very trying times. I am inspired and uplifted by her story. Yet her behavior is so offensive to me and others who comment about her. I simply don't like her, even though I know she is secure in God.

How is this possible?

I think about this sometimes when I'm standing in front of the mirror in the mornings, getting ready to go to work. How can I be so intent on following God through a life of service but still be so insecure about students not liking me? How can I lie awake in bed at 5:00 a.m. and plead with God to help me see and be more aware of how much He loves me, but be so vindictive and angry with my own family members? How is it possible for me to gather my feelings of generosity closer to me and refuse to extend grace to people who have deeply wounded me? Even though so many of these things have been taken to God in prayer and I resolve to be more open and accepting of others whom I adjudge to be undeserving. At the same time I am confident of God's grace being extended to me while I continually share my concerns with Him and ask for my heart to be changed.

Perhaps this is just the human condition showing through. Paul described this conundrum beautifully in Romans 7:21 - 25

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Indeed. As I struggle along the road to heaven I will not be perfect in all things. Probably, almost nothing. But God working in my life allows me to serve Him in my mind, to yearn after Him and His righteousness. Even though my behaviors are off-putting and I am not fully developed or refined emotionally, socially, physically or spiritually. The goal I have for myself is to extend this same degree and kind of grace to those around me who are not perfect outwardly, yet who love God from the inside out.

God help us all.

Consolation Prize

Today I finished up work very early--at 10:00. So it befell me to bring Dad home from his cancer treatment and get him settled into the house. We were leaving town and I casually remarked that I was hungry. "Well, lez go it" he remarked. "Where you wan to go?"
We thought about it for a few minutes before I drove us over to a Peruvian restaurant that opened just a couple months ago. Dad was enthusiastic.
Here are pictures of the things we had: Papa Relenna (above). It is a shell of fresh mashed potatoes and is filled with shredded beef, raisins, onions and olives. I picked out the raisins and there wasn't much in the way of beef inside, but what I ate was excellent. It was amazingly good, as was the shredded onion salad. I don't know what the seasoning was on the onions, but it was sweet and very fragrant.


This is called Arroz chaufa con pollo. It is a Chinese inspired dish of fried rice with various and sundry things in it. Chaufa is the way the chicken is prepared: in little chunks. Dad kept laughing and saying, "I dun't know this chaufa thing." But I noticed that it disappeared from his plate rather quickly.

Found at 222.Tiwy.com

We were given this little basket with little wizzened somethings in it. I first thought it was fried beetles. Then as I looked at it, I told dad, "It should be called Diente la vecchia (old lady's teeth)." He winced as he laughed at my linguistic efforts.

The drink is a fruit drink laced with cinnamon. It was absolutely fantastic, whatever it was. The waitress told Dad (in Spanish) that it is made in a pressure cooker and that was about all that I could pick up. It was wonderful.

Dad and I were regretful that Gil couldn't join us, but we have an entire entre to share with him when he gets home today. "He not gonna like you bringing me home early any more becau he dun't get what we do." I agreed.

"Oh, but that wah goood!" Dad effervesced.

I couldn'g agree more.

Half Brain

Numbers have always given me fits. I don't know if it is because there was always a lot of anxiety in our family around math or if it is just that the left half of my brain doesn't work well. Mother used to drill my brother for hours on his multiplication tables. I can still see her sitting on the floor opposite Ray, flipping the 4 x 6 cards over to reveal the answers on the back of them. Ray would be sweating bullets, worried that he would get scolded for not knowing the answer to one of them. And he usually couldn't be quite fast enough for Mother.

Funny, he later was a 4.0 student in his college math classes. He could have actually been a math teacher or scientist. He's really smart. But he has trouble with the right side of his brain: reading, writing, spelling, emotions--all the things I do well at. If you could take the two of us, put us in a bag and shake us up, the end product would be someone who was quite good in most everything. But apart, we struggle in our own ways.

Some years ago when I was working as a nurse, I had to chart everything that my patients did, including their vital signs every few minutes. Every missed heartbeat, every retch (this was in the recovery room!) As the patients wheeled into my work area, I would snap up a chart and write the date and their first set of vital signs before anything else. Imagine my surprise when reviewing the chart I would see dates such as 1947, 1829, 1988. This was in 2000. I tearfully reported this to my therapist with my concern that due to our family history, I probably have early onset Alzheimers. Why else would I struggle remembering the date?

Actually, I never did have trouble with the hour or minutes. Just the year. I began to wonder if it was because I can look at my watch and see the time, look at a calendar to see what day it is, but the year is just plain recall.

Fast forward a few years. My church in St. Paul decided to have a huge potluck for me for my birthday. Being someone who always wanted to chip in, I asked if I could bring deviled eggs. Everyone loves deviled eggs and there typically are never enough on any potluck table. Sure. There were to be about 40 people there.

Great, I thought, before I slowed myself down to start calculating on paper how many eggs I'd need. There are 40 people, and since everyone loves my deviled eggs and will probably want two, I'll boil 80 eggs. Perfect. Eggs were only about $ .79 so I could pull this off, even as a graduate student.

I boiled and boiled eggs. At one point the nagging voice in the back of my head wondered why there were so many jillion eggs--somehow they seemed to be a bit many for only 40 people. Every flat surface in my kitchen was covered with hard boiled eggs. When I popped out the yolks to add mustard and other things (the deviled part), they filled up my big Pyrex bowl. Now I didn't have space to put all those 160 egg halves. This was definitely too many. But I dutifully took them by the bucketfull to my party. It was amazing--everyone loved them. They ate and ate them before it dawned on me that each egg is halved and that I really anticipated that everyone would eat two entire eggs, not two halves. Good grief.

The party planners had a good laugh about this, asking me again what my PhD was in (not math!) They took home oodles of eggs. We were just about giving them out to strangers on the street. I think I took a dozen or so (whole) eggs home.

It is humbling when part of your brain doesn't work. My students often give me these looks like they consider me to the The Great Oracle. But they don't realize yet that I'm teaching them the things that I'm good at, not the things that I can't comprehend--like number type things. It's just that it's easier to hide a left brain deficit than a right brain deficit. People are penalized for not being able to write, read, or spell, but it's not so dire if you can't add or count. So I limp on with the mass of humanity who struggle with numbers, reading, spatial skills, etc. It is hard to feel like a half wit, but in actuality, many people are. We just have nicer names for it.

Thankfulness

This morning we (the family in the U.S.) heard from my cousin's husband, who told of being moved by security to another location. They apparently are safe. However, it must be a very harrowing experience, one that they will not soon forget.

As for me, the thought of losing my cousin and her family to a violent death really made me stop and consider some important issues about the meaning of our lives and how God judges us. My cousins are some of the most ready to die people that I know, in the sense that they love God, know that they are safe with Him, and would be content whatever their fate if they believed that God allowed it. Ann is in the process of editing a book of her prayers during a particularly difficult time in her life. All I could think about, as I was praying for her, was that she knows how to pray, why to pray, and that without a doubt she was constantly in prayer over the last 24 hours. While I had great concern for her physical life, I had no concern for her spiritual life. She trusts God. Bob trusts God. After coming back to the States, both will have stories of their answered prayers and spiritual benefit they received while on this trip.

I am thankful beyond words that they are safe. But even more, that I have one more example of people whose faith rests on God. Whether they lived or died, their trust in Him is immense. I am grateful for this knowledge and their example.

A Horrified Waiting

My cousin, Ann, her husband Bob, and their two children, Michael and Rachel, flew to Mumbai today to attend Bob's daughter's wedding. We just learned via CNN of the bloody terrorist attack there, and the great danger in which Americans and foreigners of every group find themselves. We have no way to contact them. Please keep this family in your prayers, as we do not know what is happening and it must be terrifying to be there. There are hostages, gunfire, grenade explosions, and all kinds of unrest in this city today. We pray that they are not among the casualties, and hold our breath, waiting to get word from someone about what is happening.

Voice First

Some years ago, after I became involved in public speaking, my parents ran into a man who grew up in our town. He is about 8 years older than I am and rather an owlish sort of person. In passing, he mentioned that he had heard me speak or something like that, and then commented, "Who would have thought that a wallflower like Barbara would grow up to be who she is now."

I was incensed when I heard this, particularly since this man acts like an old maid and is totally unaware of it.

A wallflower? I know I was very, very quiet as a younger person, but I never thought of myself as a wallflower. Because I had such an amazing, rich inner life, was never bored, always had plenty of things to think about. I did like to be alone, reading, thinking, climbing trees, walking in the woods--always alone. It's unclear to me that I did this because there was no one else to be with, or because I preferred to be alone. But a wallflower?

It has been no secret where I have gotten this trait. My father was a loner and was always puttering off in the garage by himself. Or upstairs with his ham radio or trains, or his computer. We grew up hearing Mother say that he had grown up being waited on hand and foot by his mother, almost like an only child (she always said that as though this was a decided handicap), and was very spoiled. So he wanted to be left alone to do his own thing. That's what it looked like at least. I have my own therapist musings about this. But in any event, I grew up to be much like him. I love being around people but when I've had enough, I want to be alone. Completely alone--not Sam, not Otis, no one. Just LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

When my father was courting Mother, he used to go over to her family home and endure what to him was almost enough to send him scuttling out the door: loud Italians, seemingly yelling about whether the sky was blue or gree, up or down. Even a little yap-yap dog that sat at Daddy's feet, daring him to make a fast move. If he did, Cookie would let out a series of sharp, threatening barks. When Daddy left Mother's home, he was glad to be getting out of there.

I never understood that as a kid--it was just a funny story about an introverted man and loud Italians. He always told me that he'd rather me marry a Jamaican than an Italian because he didn't think he could endure the loud talking of another Italian family again. Mother was completely put out by this.

But the older I get, the more I recognize that I have his introverted temperament. I can be around people indefinitely, but I do not like a lot of noise. Getting married to a salsa music loving man (at 6:00 a.m.) almost undid me, initially. Having three loud, brawling, screeching, Puerto Rican stepdaughters and a loudly speaking Puerto Rican husband almost put me over the edge more than once. "Honey, I'm right here, not in the next county. Please lower your voice!"

It's hard to know if I'm like this because I've been single and accustomed to a silent house, or if the louder the decibels, the more introverted I get. It's probably a combination of both.

Today, we had a Puerto Rican relative and his wife spend the day with us. We had a wonderful time--he cooked dinner for us and regaled us with one story after another. He is a DJ on a Mexican radio station--a delightful Mr. Entertainer. And he has a shockingly LOUD voice. I realized after about 10 minutes that I had to leave the room because I was holding my breath. It took some stern talking to myself to go back and work at staying present.

He was an absolute delight and his wife was lovely. We are so glad that we made connection with them and hope to see them frequently. And I am upstairs, sitting in the semi-darkness, in absolute silence. It will take awhile to catch my breath again, even though my heart is full and I am delighted.

Whew.


Whew...

Oh Swami, Swami...

On Sunday I made brownies for our company. They are the rich, gooey kind that you want to eat one after another. We ended up with quite a few left over. So they were put into a container with a lid and pushed into the refrigerator.
Last night Sam's father wondered why we didn't have anything sweet for the end of his meal. I told him that we do. He went to the refrigerator, threw open the door and stood there for several seconds, staring into it. "I don't see nothine," he opined. I noted that he neither stooped down to see what was on the lower shelves, nor did he open the lids on anything. And yet, not only did we have brownies, we also had leftover pumpkin cake and apple crisp. He just hadn't looked for it properly.

The night before, Sam stood in front of the refrigerator, trying to think of what he wanted for supper. Since I haven't felt well, it fell to him to prepare something. "We don't have any food," he sighed. Looking past him, I saw a huge bag of Swiss Chard, a container of spaghetti with fresh home made sauce, two containers of fresh green salad, a container with leftover chicken cacciatore, apple crisp, and a pot full of cooked succotash.
"What are you talking about?" I couldn't believe what he was saying.
He pursed his lips and moved one container to the side. He looked disgusted, tired, and overwhelmed. I knew what that look meant: either he would make himself a fried egg sandwich, or he would cook up some Trader Joe's Mandarin Chicken. And so I watched as he pulled out the frying pan and put the chicken in it.

I don't know what it is about men and refrigerators. Not all men are aversive to really looking and being aware of what is in there, or cooking meals from what is there. But the men I know and live with, are like this. So intelligent in other areas, but can't find one thing in the refrigerator. I was lamenting this to a friend whose husband holds a doctoral degree. She said her husband was always asking her, "Pam, where is the milk?" She got so sick of it that she began bowing toward the refrigerator saying in a wobbly, reverential voice, "Oh Swami, Swami, show us the milk!" John would glare at her and she would tell him that if the milk were a snake he'd be dead by now. This was greatly comforting to me, recently married and stunned at how Sam couldn't find anything. But it was alarming on the other hand because it meant that we'd waste a lot of food over the course of our lives because I'd cook it and he couldn't find it. We'd drown in spoiled food. Indeed, there have been times when I've thrown out all sorts of things that didn't get eaten, and I don't just mean the wilted greens in the crisper.

This strangeness about kitchens and finding food seems to come from the fact that some men can't identify what they are looking at. When I came downstairs this morning, Sam was wiping ant spray around the pantry door. "We have ants and I'm killing them" he announced with determination. I squashed one with my finger.
"They were after Dad's sugar in that container he has in there. So I put it in the refrigerator."
"Good move, honey" I said, approvingly.
He sighed. We are sick of fighting ants.
This afternoon when I came home, I opened up the refrigerator to make Dad lunch. There were a number of things in there that had been rearranged so it was hard to find what I was looking for. But there, right in the front of the juice and milk, stood a large container of garlic powder. What in the world? I wondered.
Oh, the ants. That's right. The garlic is kept in the wire rack inside the pantry door. Sam was killing ants on the pantry door. He must have thought this was Dad's brown sugar.
I paged Sam right away: "You are a silly, silly man!"
He called immediately, laughing at himself.
Oh Swami, Swami, where is the brown sugar now?

House Personalities

Some houses seem to have names, faces, and a history that you can almost divine just by walking past it. Take this house above, for example. A true postmodern house that focuses on form rather than function--on fancy rather than practicality. I can picture the higgly-piggly Mr. Pickwicks that live in there. It's an Alice in Wonderland kind of house. Maybe there will be little Lollipop Kids in there or something.

Then there's this enigma. It looks a nightmare to me. But again, a true postmodern house that is making a statement, defying convention, thumbing its nose at all those pillared plantation style homes that define what a house is supposed to be.

Some homes give off a decidedly frightening, cold, or conflictual vibe when you walk inside it. I used to hate to visit one woman because her marriage was on the rocks and I could feel it whenever I walked in the door. Even without anyone saying anything--unhappiness hung in the air like a wet blanket.

For years I have looked at houses very closely, for a variety of reasons. When I was single I used to go walking in the evenings and enjoy seeing the lights on in houses, forms of people having supper around a table or gathered together in the livingroom. I looked at those homes with real longing and wondered how those people had been able to pull that off and I hadn't.

Later, I looked at houses with intention to rent. Renting apartments was really tiring and it was time to graduate into something more substantial and that could hold my many belongings. So into a house rental I went. In the meantime, I looked at many a house, trying to find one that had a "good personality." You know what I mean: it feels warm and inviting, bright, with lots of greenery around it, room for a garden and a dog in the backyard. I could imagine myself entertaining people there and feeling comfortable bringing others home on a whim.

For some years I used to drive up to a local community college, taking one course at a time in order to get some pre-requisites out of the way for my master's degree. As the main road bore off to the right, there was a small, dark and ominous looking house on a hill that abutted out above the road. It always made me shudder because it looked like the kind of place where people committed criminal acts and hid the bodies in the basement. It needed paint and it had no yard. There was sometimes a single light left on, but it looked largely uninhabited. Really creepy. So I used to say a prayer every time I drove past it, looking up into the curtained, dark windows. I wondered if it was haunted, it was so awful looking. When we moved to this community I was delighted to see that someone has renovated the house, put up a picket fence around it and painted it in bright pastel colors. It is a charming sight now, even though I still eye the little side door into the garage and basement.

Up the road, nested up against a hill is a small off-white cottage type of house with a little steeple type affair on top that you may have seen on European country homes. I had just come back from visiting friends in Germany and remembered fondly these kinds of things on houses. My fantasy is that a German immigrant couple came here many years ago and settled in this valley, up against the hill. They have tried to keep something about the Old Country alive in their environment, and it is their house. I always crane my neck to see it when I drive by. One day I'd like to drive up there and find out who lives there.

When we were looking for a house to buy this year, we saw many houses that had no personality, no soul. Just big boxes. I couldn't imagine myself feeling good in them--they were too big, too impersonal, too perfect; no nooks and cranies to settle into with a good book, no cupboards under the stairs to put canned goods; no window seats or dormer windows. I look around my house now and see it almost as a blank slate that needs to have personality brought into it. It feels a bit sterile to me yet. I honestly like a much smaller, cozier house. But it was not all my decision, and I do love the area in which I live. We have no plans to leave any time soon!

It's been said that to men, a house is a responsibility and a statement of status. But to women, the house is an extension of themselves. So each gender typically views the meaning of a house in one of several different ways (I would add that these divergent views may also reflect personality and temperament type as well). Therefore, it seems that my job these days is to create an environment around the house, through landscaping, hanging quilts on the walls, making bedding and hanging pictures--all of which make it a warm, inviting place. I want to plant climbing roses across the back fence, put lavender out along the sunny western wall of the house, put in dwarf fruit trees and a homey vegetable garden. It is frustrating not to have time to do these things--yet. Thus, this extension of myself must wait until I have time to do with it what I'd like.

Houses have different personalities and different meanings. After standing empty for eight months, ours is happy to embrace the life that is lived in it.

Warum?

I recently attended a church service that was particularly moving. The sermon was about fear over the economy, not having enough money, and the anguish of people who are watching their homes go into foreclosure. The kindly, soft-spoken pastor brought real comfort and inspiration to all of us who were filled with stress after hearing that AIG had declared bankruptcy. Following the sermon, "There is a Balm in Gilead" was sung as a song of response. Sadly, the singing detoured me from my spiritual meditation unexpectedly.

Being a singer myself, I tend to be hypercritical of other vocalists. Particularly people who sing classical music. Such was this man. He was an imposing figure, standing at about six feet and four inches, weighing around 250 lbs. Opera singers tend to weigh a bit more. (What gives better sound--a little upright or a 9-foot Steinway? That is what my voice teacher asked me when I remonstrated at her suggestion that I gain 50 lbs.)

Anyhow, this guy seemed to be singing to himself. He seemed to be focusing on what his voice sounded like inside of his head (it does sound different from the inside, by the way), and he stared off toward the exit signs over the back doors. Not once did he ever make eye contact with anyone in the church--no smile, no warmth, no nothing. He did not connect to anyone except himself. It almost felt obscene to me. Yes, his voice has a lovely quality to it and women line up to swoon over him (sadly, I think he may be gay). However, even if I closed my eyes, there was nothing warm in it. It was technically perfect but it completely lacked soul. Completely. I could almost hear him singing the German art song, "Warum?" (Why?) his lips forming the words perfectly, his eyes staring vacantly straight ahead. His voice was like a museum piece: back behind a thick glass, bolted and tied down so it could never leave. It is restrained by its surroundings. You can't take a museum piece home with you. You can only admire it from afar.

I wondered, to whom is he singing? Why is he even singing in the first place? Who benefits from this?

Some people sing to God. You can tell that they go into a deep, experiential place when they close their eyes and focus on what they are saying, as it is a personal message to God. There is real meaning and spirit to their singing even though they don't connect to their audience with their eyes. But typically, these people will at least once or twice allow their eyes to sweep over the audience.

Others sing to another person--just one. You can see couples eyeing each other when one is holding forth up front and the other is sitting center front, with an approving look, eyebrows raised in either encouragement or anxiety. Sam and I often do this with me speaking and him back half-way in the audience with a dear, proud look on his face. (I never know if I'm bombing or not because he's so delighted to see me up front that he beams at me regardless.) Perhaps one of the most tender and sweetest examples of one person singing to another was on the "I Love Lucy" show, when after learning that she was pregnant, Ricky Ricardo sang to Lucy, "We're having a baby, my baby and me!" And the eyes of all Americans filled with tears of tenderness.

It's the singer who makes a connection with the audience who seems to do best, and who we love to hear most. Even Andrea Boccelli, the man who can't see his audience, connects well with them because you can see him listening intently to the crowd, then "giving them his face"--smiling broadly, opening his arms to the audience in what has been called "the Madonna gesture." Audiences have an almost visceral response to this embracing gesture.

Unfortunately, some people who sing well are very shy. Others are ill at ease in crowds. Still others are worried that if they do too well they won't know what to say to people afterward. But it is almost criminal not to sing TO people who are there to listen, or to sing to God and allow the congregation to listen in. Those who sing with less developed voices, or even those who are a little bit off-key, are enthusiastically forgiven if they sing with their whole soul and look their audience in their faces. Their eyes twinkle, they are emotionally, deep into the lyrics, and want to share their interpretation with the audience.

This singer could not open his heart, only his mouth. I left church jarred by the contrast between the pastor's soulful entreaty and the hollow perfection of his performance.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,

but have not love,

I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal.

(1 Corinthians 13:1)

Jesus is coming back for us sometime soon. It is hard to imagine that it will be a long ways off, given the condition of our collapsing economy and the disaster on the horizon. I'm sure that Christians who believe in the Second Coming have thought His return was near during the Depression, then during the Holocaust. But I do wonder about this.

I grew up with this picture: the world in chaos and darkness. People coming out of the hills and woods to greet the One who is taking them up to heaven. I love this picture, even though it is woefully inaccurate in terms of the condition of the world. And there are no "bad people" who are waiting, horrified to see Jesus.

It makes me want to be awake and aware so that I don't miss out. It reminds me of the passage in Matthew 22, about the great invitation to the banquet feast:

"The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy." The "good" people weren't interested enough to drop everything and go. They had a new home, a new wife, a new team of oxen, new property--all that was more important than going to the feast of the Master. In today's language, we have a new house, a new timeshare, a new husband, and we'll miss Seinfeld if the dinner is scheduled at the time he comes on.

We are really not that different.

What truly bothers me is that I have been invited and am doing little to invite others to go, too. It seems that I am rebuked in everything I have been reading for my morning devotionals. And I think to myself, what am I doing to share the Good News of Christ's power, grace, and love? Will one day, I be horrified to find that because of my natural reticence to speak up, my tendency to be a people-pleaser, that I have missed out on numerous opportunities to let others know about the God I love? And if I am hesitant to talk to others about Him, do I really love Him? Is it enough to talk about God and His love, or should I also talk about Christ's soon return?

I remember a distasteful event once as I was flying into Southern California from New York. My seatmate was an enthusiastic Campus Crusade adherent, and he inquired about whether or not I was saved. My religious tradition believes that being saved is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. "As ye have received Him, walk ye in Him" etc. We are not automatically locked in to salvation. Even though God's sacrifice on the cross was sufficient for us, we have the free choice very day to decide if we want Him to be Lord of our lives. I tried to point this out to my seatmate with the added information that I had given myself to God when I was 15 years old and have walked closely with Him ever since. This was not good enough for this zealot. He pulled out a set of cards on a ring out of his pocket and asked me if he could read through them with me. I was really put off. He had not acknowledged that my dedication and daily walk with God even existed, let alone up to his standard. So because I wasn't able to tell him that I didn't want to hear him read his cards, he started in with the Four Spiritual Laws. It was an abbreviated version, but he hurriedly read through each card. I was so vexed that all I did was nod. He asked if I would respond at the end. I don't remember what I said, but I think I stated that this was not new to me, it was just in different language than I typically used when I talked about my relationship with God. He still didn't buy it until I assented to whatever it was he had asked me at the end. Then he relaxed and announced that I was saved. I was so completely put off.

I don't want to be this obnoxious to other people. My thought has been that if I am a loving and lovable Christian who listens to others, is respectful, helpful, kind-hearted, etc., that people will be influenced positively. Like how I am with my students: I don't hesitate to pray in class, am a "safe" person to many of them, and eager to support them in their work. But now I'm thinking that perhaps there is something else that I need to be doing. If the house is burning down you need to yell at some people to get them out of it before they die. Not everyone will be drawn out of the house because they see you smiling and warmly inviting them to follow you outside. Some people need to be jolted into recognizing what is happening because since they aren't looking for a fire, they won't realize that it is ready to destroy them.

I truly believe that I have a responsibility to try to encourage and warn people about the Second Coming of Christ--the tribulation and all that the Bible tells us will happen at the end of the age. Looking around, one wonders if that we are on the edge of that or not. I think we are.

What if we aren't? I will look fanatical.

What if we are? Will I be responsible for all who I could have warned but didn't?

This is what I've been mulling over in my name for several days now. It seems that a safe way to go is to be sure that I reach out to people around me in some way that will benefit them. To be often in prayer--deep, sincere prayer--and ask God to give me the words and wisdom to know how to speak with people, to get past my skitishness about speaking to other people. And not to be obnoxious.

Maybe some of you have some ideas about this. I'd like to hear them.