A Gray Day

It's one of those days: blustery and gray, not-normal-for-the-sunshine state type day.

The sun was out earlier. I was walking back to my office then, and someone was playing the bagpipes from the other side of the lake. Bless him or her or them! (This is the second time I've heard bagpipe music this month.) My coworker saw me turned toward the lake and said, "The highlanders are coming." There is no high land here for the highlanders to come from, but it's nice to imagine. And even easier to imagine now that the day has turned gray.

It's a peculiar thing the joy in melancholy, the celebration of a gray day. It's not a celebration of sadness nor a honoring of depression. I would avoid both. But there is a pleasure in punctuation--in the variety that comes from change.  I'm grateful for a gray day, fog and mist, and some bagpipe music across the lake.

A Walk Across Campus

It's been one of those days--busy, hectic, non-stop. There were classes to prepare for, a class to teach, multiple students who needed scheduling advice, and parents to reassure. There was no let up until midafternoon, and I'm still not done.

At one point a friend (another professor here) dropped in and asked if I needed a mental break. She suggested we walk across campus together to investigate our snack options. As we walked, we ran into different students. I don't always get to look objectively at the teaching profession, so it was interesting for me to watch my friend interact with her students. They were happy to see her and she them.

My friend found her snack and managed to convince a cafe worker to give me some lemon juice and honey (I'm sick). On our walk back I told her, "Sometimes we need to do this--just walk across campus to see why we are here."

Teaching is a busy profession. We teachers have to stop our work, come up for air, and remember the students we are doing the work for.

Reflections from 39,000 feet

I'm writing this post over Texas. Yes, I'm on an US Airways flight heading for Orlando.  Blogging is my way of reflecting--by my lack of posts this year, it doesn't seem like I've done much reflecting. The pleasure of flying (when all goes right) is it gives me the chance to think. I could be writing this looking out the plane window. (Somehow looking out the windows, whether in cars, or buses, or planes makes me sweetly melancholy--if there is such a thing.) However, I was requested to switch seats, so I'm on the aisle seat instead. Still, the calm of this flight, the conversations that aren't quite audible, the noise of the plane, most of the blinds pulled down all put me in a reflective mood. 

When I was home, my mom asked me to go through a box of my stuff that I had somehow missed in previous purges. The anachronistic assortment of memorabilia was a gift to remind of the good in my life: there was a miniature Eiffel tower from a Paris trip in 1999, a blanket from Thailand, a card from one of my college roommates, an obsidian arrowhead found while hiking alone down a riverbed, a painting from a high school art class, notes from an interview for a graduate school journalism class, and many other things.  

The one thing that caught my attention the most was a calendar from 2009. On it were meetings to attend, get-togethers with friends, and travel dates. What stood out to me the most were all the "resume due by" dates. These where the schools I had applied to work at, cities I could have lived in--then the most important date (for my life now) was a day in October to "fly to Orlando". 

Looking at all those dates, I am just reminded how grateful I am for how God leads my life. When I was filling out those resumes and looking for work, I couldn't see more than a couple of feet ahead. I wasn't even sure I would find a job. It's good for me now to look back and see how far I've come. 

God's Peace Guards Our Hearts

I love how sometimes Bible texts that I know separately come together. Recently, I saw the relationship between the following texts:

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it" (Proverbs 4:23).

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7).

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

God’s peace guards our hearts!

The Dog

In the darkness I could barely see the dog, and when I did see him I stopped. Was he aggressive or gentle? If I made a sudden movement, would he bite me? I didn't know, so I stood still. He walked toward me and looked at me. I walked on. As I walked I looked back, and he was following me. I talked to him, "Are you my new friend?" He came a little closer, and then I noticed what I hadn't seen before. He was skinny--so skinny his ribs showed. "Come with me," I told him. He followed me to my apartment, struggling up the stairs behind me. I gave him some water first. Then I went back in my apartment and pulled out some sweet potatoes I had cooked the night before. (Yes, I had no dog food and no meat to feed him.) By the time I'd gotten the sweet potatoes, he had disappeared. I found him at the bottom of my stairs. I gave him the sweet potatoes and sat down next to him on the curb. He ate two of the sweet potatoes. He wasn't impressed by them, but I guess hunger will drive a dog to anything--even eating sweet potatoes. After he ate the sweet potatoes, he looked at me and tried to put his head in my hands. He was hungry for love too.

Chattanooga Angel

I was standing outside Subway with my niece and nephew looking at a map of downtown Chattanooga when a kind older gentleman approached us on a bike and asked us where we wanted to go. I told him, "I'm looking for the free shuttle stop." He directed me to cross the street and go down one block. We found the stop, but I wasn't positive we were at the right place. What if he had just directed us to a bus stop? After waiting about 10 minutes we saw the free shuttle on the other side of the street. I watched it and told my niece and nephew it would most likely go up the street and circle back, but I felt anxious that I was wrong. As I was wondering if we should make a mad dash across the street to catch the shuttle the same man on the bike showed up again and said, "The shuttle will circle around soon and come here. It should be here in 5 minutes."

It was such a simple thing directions and reassurance, but I saw this as a tenderness from God. Sometimes  he shows up just in time to let me know--the shuttle will come--what I need will be taken care of even if I feel anxious.

The funny thing is that my niece and nephew told me that they had seen the man on bike earlier. They said that he was the man we chatted with about a weird metalic statue (this had happened about an hour earlier on the other side of the river at a different shuttle stop).

God Knows My Heart

I remember a story of a child who was too scared to go into a dark room. The mother said, "Don't be scared. Your guardian angel is with you." The child replied, "That's what I'm scared of."

Lots of people say, "God knows my heart." They usually mean it as a way to justify themselves. "Yes, everyone at work may be angry with me, but God knows my heart." I think like that child in the story before that's what we should be scared of. God knows our hearts. His assessment of the human heart is not always  positive. "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). "But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people" (John 2:24).

Thomas Brooks in his book Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices said, "Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices, are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched. If any cast off the study of these, they cannot be safe here, nor happy hereafter."

I have found some pretty basic heart tests mostly through failing them.

How do I react when someone disagrees with me?
How do I react when someone tailgates me or cuts in front of me?
How do I react when I'm disappointed in a person?
How do I react to criticism?
How do I react when I'm overlooked?
How do I react to jealousy?
How do I react to unsolicited advice?
How do I react when someone corrects the way I do something?

I find any automatic turn to anger or a quick defensiveness as pretty good signs that I'm in for a hearty dose of God's grace to transform my heart.

Father, you know my heart. Please change it once again today! "As the deer pants for streams of water,so my soul pants for you (Psalms 42:1).

I got the Brook's quote from the following blog post:  http://www.challies.com/reading-classics-together/satan-loves-to-sail-with-the-wind#more