Hurricane update

Hurricane Gustav is currently at Category 4 level, with sustained winds at 145mph, and it's continuing to strengthen. If it reaches 155mph, it will be a Category 5 storm, just like the infamous Katrina.

(Find out more on www.weather.com.)

I don't know why, guys, but something about this hurricane and the potential danger and damage it seems to be gearing up for...well, it's really hitting me hard; harder then usual. Maybe because I've been there (to the Gulf Coast), maybe because I've seen firsthand what these storms do to people's lives...maybe because I know people there...I don't know why, exactly, but I'm finding this hard to deal with.

And I'm hundreds of miles away, safe in my house tonight, my worst weather concern was that it was uncomfortably humid today....

*sigh*

I wish I could do something to help.

Blinded by the light...

My brother has been walking around the house for the past two days, randomly bursting into choruses of the song, "Blinded by the Light". I'm really not sure why, quite frankly. I didn't even know he liked that song. In fact, I didn't even know he knew that song existed, let alone knew the words to it.

Actually, I don't think he does honestly know the words to it. Because he just keeps singing the same line, over and over and over and over again, getting progressively louder at each repetition. "Blinded by the light...Blinded by the light! BLINDED BY THE LIGHT!! BLIIIIINDED BY THE LIIIIIIGHT!!!!!"

(Have I mentioned that the singing gene just doesn't seem to exist in our family? Apparently it wasn't just me it skipped. My dear brother didn't have any luck in that category, either. *sigh*)

And when this chorus met my ears for about the 7,402nd time, I realized that maybe, just maybe, this was something bloggable ( < new word. How much fun is that to say? Bloggable bloggable bloggable!)...that maybe there was a way to tie it in to today's post. It's worth a try, right?

While listening to the radio the other day, I heard a story...hopefully I can remember it:

A hurricane ripped across the coastline, pouring intense amounts of rain down on the inhabitants. Cities were flooding, the water was rising and people were crying out for help. One man climbed on to his rooftop to avoid the rapidly rising water in his house. He looked up to heaven and called out, "God, save me!"

The man had loved God all his life, and truly believed that God would reach down and save him from this disasterous situation. He watched for God's hand to come down from heaven; he listened carefully so he wouldn't miss God's voice when it told him what to do.

As he was listening so intently, a rowboat floated by with a neighbor in.
"Do you need some help?" shouted the neighbor. "Climb in my boat!"
The man on the rooftop shook his head. "No, thanks!" he yelled back. "God's going to save me!"
Rowboat man shrugged and rowed away.

Well, the flood waters continued to rise and rooftop man was growing impatient. He thought maybe God hadn't heard him the first time, so he called out again, even louder, "God! Save me!!"
He stared up at the heavens, watching and waiting for the moment when God would come and save him from the floodwaters.

While he waited, another boat came by; this one even bigger then the last. Half a dozen people sat in this boat, but there was still plenty of room inside. One passenger held out a life vest.
"Hey there!" called out the passenger. "You need some help? Here! Take this!"

But rooftop man shook his head and held out his hand. "No, thanks!" he shouted back. "God's going to save me, you'll see!" The people in the boat shrugged and headed off to another rooftop.

Now, the rain had started up again and the situation wasn't exactly getting any better. Rooftop man realized that God better hurry up and do something here. He was getting pretty nervous. "God!" he called out again. "Please, God, please save me!!"

The waters had almost reached the top of his roof. The man danced around anxiously, on his tiptoes, knowing that his miraculous rescue would come any second and not wanting to miss it.
Unfortunately, he was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter.

The helicopter came closer and the man heard a voice coming through a bull horn say, "You there! Hang on! We're sending you a ladder!"
"No!" the man shouted back as loudly as he could. He shook his head again to prove his point. "No, that's OK! God's going to save me!"

Looking rather surprised, the helicopter folks nodded and shrugged and moved off to go find another person in need of rescue.
Well, a few moments later the flood waters had risen so high that they swept the man off his roof. He tried his best to swim away, but in the end, the current was too deep and he drowned.

When the man got to heaven, he said to God, "God!! I've loved you and served you all my life. I've been a faithful follower of your Word. I trusted you to save me! I cried out to you and you didn't do anything! You ignored my prayer, God! Why didn't you save me??"

God raised his eyebrows and looked at the man. "Are you kidding me?!" he said, surprised. "I tried! I sent you two boats and a helicopter! What more did you want?!"

In this story, the man was so sure that God was going to save him. He had this expectation that God would do something totally, incredibly, earth-shatteringly amazing in order to complete the rescue mission. The man was expecting a huge-scale miracle! He was waiting for the hand of God Himself to reach down and save him; he was waiting for God's voice to command the waters to recede. The man cried out, "God, save me!" and trusted God to do so. The only problem was that he was so focused on the powerfulness and miraculousness of God, that he missed the smaller miracle right in front of him.

He was blinded by the light, so to speak. This man believed so strongly that God could and would make unbelievable, inconceivable miracles happen (the "light") that he was unable to see that sometimes, God delights in using the ordinary to do extraordinary things.

The point is that sometimes, we get blinded by the light, too. We get so caught up in reading Bible stories about manna falling from heaven or angels saving people from fiery furnances or the mouths of lions being closed that we forget about the everyday miracles, too.
The thing is, God provides for our every need. If we need it, he's already got it taken care of. He hears every single one of our prayers. And he answers them -- often in ways that we wouldn't expect.

We need to make sure that our expectations don't interfere with our vision. It's great to believe that God does amazing things -- He certainly does! But don't let yourself get so caught up in the extraordinary that you miss all the incredible things he does on a smaller scale.

The most amazing thing God's done in my life? Bringing my best friend into it. There were no lions, fiery furnances, voices from Heaven or manna falling from the sky. In fact, the very first time I met my best friend, I hardly even talked to her. It wasn't an extraordinary day by any means; it was a picnic. But it was the start of the most amazing and important and incredible and yes, miraculous friendship I've ever experienced.

Is there something in your life right now that you are praying for? Are you waiting for God to answer a prayer? Be careful that your expectations of HOW he is going to answer don't interfere with your realization that he HAS answered it.

Don't be so busy waiting to hear God's voice that you miss the rowboat and the helicopter right in front of you. Sometimes God might give you an incredibly obvious answer to an incredibly complicated situation. It's easy to overlook the everyday answers to prayers -- the best friend who called to say Hi when you were feeling low, the brother who started singing obnoxiously when all you wanted to do was focus on writing a blog post, the dog who barked continously for you to take him for a walk so you could enjoy a gorgeous day...

Be ready and waiting for the ordinary AND the extraordinary. If you EXPECT God to do great things, He will. But beyond that, you've also got to be looking for these BIG things -- sometimes in the smallest of places. Don't be blinded by the light of God's greatness -- let his light illuminate things you might have otherwise missed.

The Dinner Party -- a short story

I've read this story a million times and I love it. Just recently I stumbled upon it again, and thought I'd share it with you guys....For now, just enjoy the story :) I have some musings on this story, and a "lesson" to take from it, but I'm not posting that yet; I might rewrite that post first....

The Dinner Party
by Mona Gardner

The country is India. A large dinner party is being given in an up-country station by a colonial official and his wife. The guests are army officers and government officials and their wives, and an American naturalist.
At one side of the long table a spirited discussion springs up between a young girl and a colonel. The girl insists that women have long outgrown the jumping-on-a-chair-at-the-sight-of-a-mouse era, that they are not as fluttery as their grandmothers. The colonel says they are, explaining that women haven't the actual nerve control of men. The other men at the table agree with him.
"A women's unfailing reaction to any crisis," says the colonel, "is to scream. And while a man may feel like it, yet he has that ounce more of courage than a woman has. And that last ounce is what counts !"
The American scientist does not join in the argument, but sits watching the faces of the other guests. As he looks, he sees a strange expression come over the face of the hostess. She is staring straight ahead, the muscles of her face contracting slightly. With a small gesture she summons the native boy standing behind her chair. She whispers to him. The boy's eyes widen: he turns quickly and leaves the room. No one else sees this, nor the boy when he puts a bowl of milk on the verandah outside the glass doors.
The American comes to with a start. In India, milk in a bowl means only one thing. It is bait for a snake. He realizes a cobra is in the room.
He looks up at the rafters - the most likely place - and sees they are bare. Three corners of the room, which he can see by shifting slightly, are empty. In the fourth corner a group of servants stand, waiting until the next course can be served. The American realizes there is only one place left - under the table.
His first impulse is to jump back and warn the others. But he knows that the commotion will frighten the cobra and it will strike. He speaks quickly, the quality of he voice so arresting that it sobers everyone.
"I want to know just what control everyone at this table has. I will count to three hundred - that's five minutes - and not one of you is to move a single muscle. The person who moves will forfeit 50 rupees. Now ! Ready!"
The 20 people sit like stone images while he counts. He is saying ".... two- hundred and eighty...." when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the cobra emerge and make for the bowl of milk. Four or five screams ring out as he jumps up and slams shut the verandah doors.
"You certainly were right, Colonel !" the host says. "A man has just shown us an example of real control."
"Just a minute," the American says, turning to the hostess, "there's one thing I'd like to know. Mrs. Wynnes, how did you know that the cobra was in the room?"
A faint smile lights up the woman's face as she replies: "Because it was lying across my foot."

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Safe or Stuck?

First of all, I invite you all to check out a brand new fantastic blog, Somnium of Sarcalogos. (The Latin student in me is just loooooooving that name!!)

Yes, I've been rather lax this month with posts. I'm sorry...there's just been too much going on!! Hopefully things will settle down (at least a little!) now and I can post more in February. We shall see :)

Now....

For the past two weeks in Sunday School, we've been discussing fences. We began by discussing the many purposes and functions of fences. Because really, fences are pretty extraordinary things, when you think about it!

At the preschool I work at, we have a fence around the playground -- to keep the kids in and away from the parking lot and busy road.

My friend has a fence to keep her dogs in their yard.

Fences can be used to create boundaries -- they say, "This is MINE. That is YOURS." Fences can be used as an unquestionable, visual reminder of property. Our neighbors have a fence between their yard and ours. There's never a question of who needs to mow what grass -- we know exactly where our boundaries end and theirs begin.

My youth leader then went on to state, "God's laws are like fences -- do you agree?"

Well, that was an intresting question. God's laws are like fences??

Maybe they are. God certainly lays out boundaries for us. He makes it quite clear in the Bible what He expects of us and what He expects us to stay away from. There's no question about that.

And just like that fence that keeps preschoolers safe...God's laws keep us safe too.

Do we like it? Not usually. It's easy to get so focused on the fence or the blockade in front of you that you miss what's beyond it. You might be so busy lamenting your lack of freedom that you don't see the danger beyond.
Fences do more then keep us IN. They keep danger OUT.

Take my preschoolers -- there are many days when they complain, "There's not enough room! I want to go run out there!" Every single day kids try to climb over the fence, under the fence, or run out past the gate. There is one child who seems to think that running into the fence at top speed will eventually cause it to break and let him out!

The kids don't realize that there are cars in the parking lot and a busy, dangerous road out there -- they are too focused on getting their freedom. They don't know any better -- they need that fence to keep them safe, because they don't understand that danger lurks beyond the fence. Left to their own devices, they would make dangerous choices.

We're an awful lot like those preschoolers, aren't we? God puts up fences in our lives and we spend a good amount of energy trying to climb over them, crawl under them or even run right through them. We don't pause to think about WHY the fences are there -- we're too busy complaining about them.

The fact is, God gives us laws to live by, because without them, we'd just make a big mess of things. We'd make the same dangerous choice as a preschooler running out on a busy road. Quite plainly, we just don't know enough about what's out there, beyond our fences and boundaries.

But God does. God sees everything we will ever encounter, and He builds up fences in the exact places we need them most. Not to trap us. Not to hold us hostage or make our lives miserable or deny us our freedom or be a big old meanie. It's exactly the opposite -- God gives us laws and rules to live by because He loves us, and He knows what's best for us, and He wants to prevent us from blindly running out in the middle of a road.

Often, we teachers find that when we ask the kids why they want to get out of the fence, they can't really come up with answer. They seem to want it simply because it's something new and interesting -- they just want to do something different. Maybe they're just bored. It usually just takes a few suggestions about new things they can do INSIDE the fences, new ideas and new ways to play, and suddenly they lose interest in climbing fences and running away.

Is that how it is with us? Do we just want to break God's laws to test our boundaries, to see what will happen, to try something new and intresting? Is there any good reason for our disobedience beyond boredom?

Next time you find yourself attempting to climb over a fence, pause and think for a minute. What might be beyond this fence that God's trying to protect me from? Is it really that important for me to be out there, instead of in here? Am I just testing my boundaries with God?

Make it a habit to look at your fences as God's wall of protection rather then a big cruel cage. Maybe you'll even find you like the view better from inside the fence.