My mirror is hanging back up on the wall.

I am concentrating on postives.

My mirror is hanging back up on the wall because Pastor helped me take care of it on two separate visits.  The first, he took it down.  The second, he hung it back up after putting quite a bit of elbow grease into unscrewing the remaining hook that I could not remove even with the assistance of a drill.  After discovering that my hollow-wall anchors were too deep for the wall, I fetched some others from the store, used my level to draw perfectly straight, perfectly centered marks, and put two more anchors back in the wall.  I figured the next able bodied kind person who came over could lift the mirror back in place.

My mirror is hanging back up on the wall and the marble below was neither broken nor damaged in the process.

Today was a long, arduous day in which I was hard pressed to find many positives. However, I did managed to take care of 22 of 25 boxes of school supplies.  And my overwhelmed voice mail to Pastor netted a return voice mail with a suggestion that I concentrate on the children I was helping rather than being left in the lurch by my boss.

I admit, I was, and probably still am, very, very frustrated.  I mean, do you think someone with MS who has been ill for months should be tasked to schlep 20 boxes of school supplies from her office to the car to the second floor of a school building, and then sort through an additional 5 boxes, organize them, and get everything ready for the students by herself?

Only 17 of the original boxes fit into my Highlander, so I do have a bit more work to do tomorrow before the Back-to-School night we are sponsoring at an inner-city school.  I am shaky and weak and very, very sore.  I imagine my muscles tomorrow will be greatly protesting the work of this day.

I took Pastor's admonishment to heart and spent my time organizing, sorting, and packing also praying over the school supplies, for the children who will use them and for their families.  Nothing like a bit of proper perspective to help accomplish the seemingly impossible.  Still, I heartily wish that I were not repeatedly put in these situations.

After walking Kashi once I arrived home, I started in on the laundry.  While I would rather sleep away the evening, if I wish to be clothed tomorrow for work, there are a few key articles of clothing which need to be cleaned.  I am counting the minutes until this last load is ready for the dryer.

This morning, I wanted to wear my brown pants because then I would be wearing my most comfortable shoes for the long day I knew lay ahead of me.  I searched for them for an entire hour, at times angry and at times crying.  I searched every place I could think of until finally I remembered the last time I wore them:  the anniversary event.  The sweltering anniversary event.  There in the middle of a rather overflowing laundry basket were my brown pants.  Feeling rather stupid, I then picked through my remaining clean clothes to match my second most comfortable shoes.  Hence, I cannot sleep until that basket has everything at least hanging up to dry or drying.

So, in trying to stay awake, I turned back to studying the Living Word.  Too sleepy to tackle another evening lecture, I listened to Pastor's sermon again from Sunday and thought about our lessoning last Saturday.  What came to mind is a favorite part of Walther's first evening lecture because I truly believe it to be at the core of many of my struggles.  It comes from the part where, before outlining the distinctions between Law and Gospel, he enumerates how they are not distinct:

Nor can this naive, yet quite current, distinction be admitted, that the Law is the teaching of the Old while the Gospel is the teaching of the New Testament.  By no means; there are Gospel contents in the Old and Law contents in the New Testament.  Moreover, in the New Testament the Lord hss broken the seal of the Law by purging it from Jewish ordinances.(7)

What strikes me most is the qualifier at the first: yet quite current.  This is from 1884.  Does that not seem as if there could be no possibility that his qualifier would be relevant?  Ah, but it is.  It is for in my life, save for the Lutheran doctrine gifted to me of late.  For as long as I can remember, for as long as I have been in church, there has been the New Testament for Christians and the Old Testament for the children of Israel.  The New Testament for the present.  The Old Testament for the past.  I was to study the past for what I could glean about the nature of God and His perfect plan and for theoretical application to my life, but not as part of the whole of the Living Word, not as the Word of Christ.  So his note of popular thinking of the day still applies 125 years later.

Funny, though, if you think about it.  While Law is relegated to the Old Testament in many Protestant churches, it sure does seem to crop up awfully frequently in teaching on how we are supposed to be as Christians.  I liked Pastor's warning:  the biggest danger for us is to regard the Word of God as a rule book.  Yes there are absolutes and teaching as to how we should live, what we should or should not do, but those are only a part.  The whole is that it is a Life book, not a rule book.

One of my favorite passages is from Deuteronomy, chapter 30, where Moses is standing before Israel and saying that God has set before them life and death, adversity and prosperity.  He implores them to choose life so that they might have it abundantly.

Now, I would not say that it is a favorite passage of mine because I am given the option to choose...for remember I was taught the Old Testament is not for me.  Instead, I think it is the imagery.  Over and over again God set Life before the Israelites, even when they consistently chose death, chose other idols and gods and only turned back in times of trouble and travail.  Is that not forgiveness?  Is that not love?  Can you not see Moses standing there, arm sweeping wide to encompass a land flowing with milk and honey and entreating the people before him to come, take and eat, accept the gift of God.

For years, I have wondered what it meant to have life abundantly.  Oh, there have been many sermons and bible studies along the way, but they all seemed to miss the mark, to once again focus on abundant life stemming from living a life that is pleasing to God, living a life that is holy and godly.  Yet I am wondering if that is egregiously wrong.  Egregious to the Christian.  Egregious to the Cross.  It is to the former because it sets them up for a sense of failure in faith.  It is to the latter for it makes His Work on the Cross insufficient.

What's the bible study answer?  Pastor would ask were he here now and I begging him to teach me about abundant life.  Jesus!

Kleinig, in talking Luther's teaching about meditating on the Word, paints a picture I think might actually be abundant life, even if being attacked by satan seems the antithesis of such.

As long as we operate by our own power, with our own intellect and our own too-human notions, the devil lets us be. But as soon as we meditate on God's Spirit-filled Word and draw upon the power of the Holy Spirit by meditating on it, the devil attacks us by stirring up misunderstanding, contradiction, opposition, and persecution.  He mounts that attack through the enemies of the Gospel in the Church and in the world.  The purpose of this attack is to destroy our faith and undo the hidden work of God's Word in us.  As soon as God's Word is planted in our hearts, the devil tries to drive it out so that we will no longer operate by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But, paradoxically, these attacks are counter-productive.  Luther says, "For as soon as God's Word takes root and grows in you, the devil will harry you, and will make a real doctor [of theology] of you, and by his assaults will teach you to seek and love God's Word."  Thus the devil's attack on us serves to strengthen our faith because it drives us back to God's Word as the only basis for spiritual life. (22)

No one...no one wants to be attacked, wants to bear the cross in his or her life.  Yet, I wonder, if in turning to the Word while bearing crosses, the rightness that resonates beyond all worldly wisdom you find is actually the abundant life.