Five loads of laundry, clean, are piled upon the still unmade bed in the basement.  Just the thought of them exhausts me.  Yet I cannot run down the basement every time I need socks, underwear, or a towel.

I kept my dear friend up too late during her visit, exhausting her and myself.  I couldn't help myself, so hungry am I for fellowship, so generous is she.  I hate myself for doing so.  I do not see why she ever comes back.

When I am tired, my body doesn't hold things in place.  First my right knee.  When I am turning, such as to load the dishwasher when I am standing at the sink, if I am not careful to lift my foot off the floor my thigh will turn and my lower leg will remain where it is, pulling apart my knee.  Agony follows as I have to slowly turn and guide things where they should be.  Then my right hip.  If I am too tired, when I raise my leg to step up, my hip begins to move out the socket.  Agony follows as I lower my legs and twist and shift and move it back in place.  Next came my right shoulder.  Then my left thumb.  Then my left wrist.  Now it is my left foot.  When I am tired, and I tuck my foot beneath my leg as I move around in bed or go to sit on the couch, it will fold in such a way that the metatarsal bones rub against each other.  Besides enduring the sheer agony of such a happening, I am terrified one more will break given the rather loud crunching and popping sound that occurs at such times.  My foot and wrist are in agony just now.

I keep my dear friend up, but I also try to wait on her more than she waits on me since she is always fetching things for me or picking up things I drop.  No one waits on her.  I genuinely want to cook for her and clean all the dishes and bring her snacks and change diapers and anything she wants and feel as if I hardly ever do anything for her.  But waiting on her makes for exhaustion compounded by my own selfishness with regards to late hours.  She is very good at hanging up on me when she needs to go (rather sweetly, but firmly).  My dear Bettina, you need to just get up, walk away from me, and climb into bed as well.

I want to do too many things that are hard for me.  I do not care that they are painful.  Just like I wanted to, truly wanted to, wash the dishes when I was doing that cooking for others, but doing so hurt so much I could hardly endure it and barely hid my agony.  Yet I know the pain makes me tired, which, in turn, makes everything worse.  The exhaustion brings me pain, which, in turn, makes everything worse.

How am I going to chop up that tree?  SIGH.

Despite my fatigue and discomfort (which I believe I hid rather well today), I had a most wonderful lunch with Bootstrap, her daughter, and my old Scripture Memory Partner.  We crammed in two games of Rumikub.  While I bitterly lost the first game, I managed to eek out a win in the second game by a fairly good tile manipulation at the very last second before I had to leave.  My only regret is that Bootstrap has yet to know the joy that is winning Rumikub.

She poured upon me many blessings.  First, her presence.  Second, the start of my first ever scrapbook.  Second, the loan of two CD sets I have been eyeing on Concordia Publishing House, which she didn't even know.  And, third, the most wondrous give of the Lutheran Hymnal (1941).  The covers is soft and smooth, perfectly worn yet pristine.  The typeset is beautiful.  The pages smell simply wonderful.  There are prayers in there that are new to me.  The words to some of the hymns I know are surprisingly different, providing much food for thought.  And, in my opinion the best part, she inscribed it to me!  For me.

The hymn I looked up upon first opportunity was Through Jesus Blood and Merit.

Through Jesus' Blood and Merit                   Through Jesus' Blood and Merit

Through Jesus' blood and merit                      Thro' Jesus' blood and merit

I am at peace with God.                                 I am at peace with God.

What, then, can daunt my spirit,                     What, then, can daunt my spirit,

However dark my road?                                 However dark my road?

My courage shall not fail me,                         My courage shall not fail me,

For God is on my side;                                  For God is on my side;

Though hell itself assail me,                           Tho' hell itself assail me

Its rage I may deride.                                     Its rage I may deride.

There's nothing that can sever                          There's naught that me can sever

From this great love of God,                            From the great love of God;

No want, no pain whatever,                              No want, no pain whatever, 

No famine, peril, flood.                                    No famine, peril, flood.

Though thousand foes surround me,                  Tho' thousand foes surround me

For slaughter mark His sheep,                          For slaughter mark Thy sheep,

They never shall confound me,                          They never shall confound me,

The vict'ry I shall reap.                                    The vict'ry I shall reap.

For neither life's temptation                            Yea, neither life's temptation

Nor death's most trying hour                           Nor death's so trying hour

Nor angels of high station                               Nor angels of high station

Nor any other pow'r                                        Nor any other pow'r

Nor things that now are present                       Nor things that now are present

Nor things that are to come                             Nor things that are to come

Nor height, however pleasant,                         Nor height, however pleasant, 

Nor darkest depths of gloom                            Nor depths of deepest gloom

Nor any creature ever                                      Nor any creature ever 

Shall from the love of God                               Shall from the love of God

This ransomed sinner sever;                            This wretched sinner sever;

For in my Savior's blood                                 For in my Savior's blood

This love has its foundation;                            This love its fountain taketh;

God hears my faithful prayer                            He hears my faithful prayer

And long before creation                                  And nevermore forsaketh

Named me His child and heir.                          His own dear child and heir.

(LSB 746)                                                         (TLH 372)




Little changes here and there until the last verse.  Funny, I never really understood and long before creation, named me His child and heir...thinking creation sounded like creation of the world but I think it has to be creation in my mother's womb.  What do you think of the change from "ransomed" sinner to "wretched" sinner?  Is fountain a reference to baptism?  Why the departure from the idea of not being forsaken to setting a time reference and emphasizing that we are named child and heir?

Who gets to change the words to hymns?  Is it because the original hymn was written in German, I think, and the LSB version is a new translation?

Funny that I love this hymn so dearly even though it never has the word forgiveness in it once!  If I were changing it willy nilly, as it seems with the end of the last verse, I would definitely add in forgiveness.  I need every opportunity to hear that word.



Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

Lord have mercy.  Christ have mercy.  Lord have mercy.

The other day I read an article about some 43,000 children in this area who have been hungry since the first snowfall over a week ago.

I have been so busy working, even with the office closed, to keep up with all that I have to do since I was out ill for two weeks that I never once thought of the children on the free lunch program in this area.  With schools closed all week, they went hungry.  And today was yet another day without food as we celebrated President's Day. 

Here I was so upset thinking about them getting through the summer that I never stopped to consider how often we have four-day school weeks or the winter holidays or Spring break.  What is it like to long for school because being able to go means being able to eat.

With many local food pantries also closed due to back-to-back blizzards, those children and their families had little recourse. 

I never once thought about them even though I have been praying about hunger in America since this fall, still fervently hoping our church might step forward and start to act in mercy to address this blight in our country.

Lord have mercy.  Christ have mercy.  Lord have mercy.

Today, my dear friend and her cherubs had their first blessing, as least the first one not one given for a christening.

I asked Bettina if we could venture to church so that I could receive the Lord's Supper, feeling selfish because I knew I would receive this medicine and she would not.  Being the woman she is, Bettina readily agreed.

I chose to take her to a church far nearer to my home for several reasons, none of which I can truly explain just now.  It is the closest I could find to the teaching and confession of my church, though the pastor's sermons posted online seem far more heavy on Law than the proper distinction between Law and Gospel.  And, frankly, I almost burst out laughing because today's sermon was essentially:  God is love...the proverbially empty sermon topic I've heard 1,001 times in the Protestant church.  Yes, God is love.  But that is not all He is, nor is it the breadth and depth of Law and Gospel.

From the first hymn note hanging in the air, I felt within me a great release and was awashed in the comfort I knew was to come before the words had yet been spoken.  By God's mercy I actually knew the first hymn.  By His mercy, the last hymn is one I need to learn.  But I digress.

Being a Baptist, my dear friend is still, gulp, a Protestant.  I long so deeply for her to know, to take in what I have learned.  I often have to stick a figurative sock in my mouth so as not to drive her off like the most annoying Amway consultant ever to walk the neighborhood.  There are many sticking points in Lutheran Doctrine that are in conflict with the Baptist Confession.  But...she is searching for the truth and is open to that being in Lutheranism should the Holy Spirit reveal it to be.  Perhaps not so much as he did I, I have a sneaking suspicion Pastor would call her a closet Lutheran as well.

I know that it will not surprise her when she reads here that I long for her children to be baptized.  I pray for that to happen quickly.  But for it to happen she and her husband would have to take the plunge I have in joining the Lutheran confession.  I had hoped a Lutheran pastor would baptize them knowing that Bettina and G-man are already raising them in faith.  But I have been told that no pastor would do so without taking them under pastoral care and that baptism is, in part, an agreement between the congregation and the baptized to ensure proper instruction follows, not just between the baptized and parent/caregiver.

Oh, how I want her cherubs to have the gift of faith.

I was selfish about asking her to go to church with me because it has been far too long since I have had the Lord's Supper.  But I wanted to go with Bettina not to have company when at a different church so much as to at least have her children join me at the alter for a blessing.  Much to my surprise, my dear friend wanted to have one herself!

I would not have dared suggest it.  To me, it would seem as crazy as my longing for a crucifix like the one I saw hanging on Pastor's wall.  After all, I struggle to explain what a blessing means to me.  Silly Myrtle, the Spirit had already moved in her.

Before the service, I had to seek out the Pastor to let him know that I was a communicant member of a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod church so that I could have the Lord's Supper this morning.  With much hemming and hawing and nervously squeezing of E's hand, I got out the purpose of my popping into his office just as he appeared to be about to put on his vestments.  I also told him about Bettina's children possibly coming up for a blessing because Pastor gives blessings to children using the words "baptismal grace."  I knew it was important that this pastor understand neither child had been baptized, so I fumbled my way through that explanation as well.  He thanked me for that knowledge and welcomed us all to join him at the alter.

I have to admit that as deeply as I longed for the body and blood of Christ upon my lips this morning, I longed to share that with my dear friend and was sorrowed that she would remain on the outside of the closed communion.  Having her and her cherubs receive a blessing was almost, not quite but almost, as good.  I watched the pastor, whom I do not know, bless each of them, perhaps focused more on the joy of that moment rather than properly paying attention to the joy of my own.


Bettina told me, this afternoon, that she had a hard time not becoming teary-eyed before she went up at the mere thought of a pastor giving her a blessing.

Oh, my dear Bettina, even Baptist preachers ought to give blessings to those beneath their care.  Would that yours would suddenly understand what a gift it is to trace the cross upon a parishioner's forehead, reminding her all that she has received, while calling upon God to look upon her in favor.


The hymn I should learn?

Jesus, I Will Ponder Now


Jesus, I will ponder now
On Your holy Passion;
With Your Spirit me endow
For such meditation.
Grant that I in love and faith
May the image cherish
Of Your suffering, pain, and death
That I may not perish.

Make me see Your great distress,
Anguish, and affliction,
Bonds and stripes and wretchedness
And Your crucifixion;
Make me see how scourge and rod,
Spear and nails did wound You,
How You died for those, O God,
Who with thorns had crowned You.

Yet, O Lord, not thus alone
Make me see Your Passion;
But its cause to me make known
And its termination.
Ah! I also and my sin
Wrought Your deep affliction;
This indeed the cause has been
Of Your crucifixion.

Grant that I Your passion view

With repentant grieving.

Let me not bring shame to You

By unholy living.

How could I refuse to shun

Ev'ry sinful pleasure

Since for me God's only Son

Suffered without measure?

If my sins give me alarm
And my conscience grieve me,
Let Your cross my fear disarm,
Peace and pardon give me.

Help me see forgiveness won
By Your holy Passion;
If for me He slays His Son,
God must have compassion!

Graciously my faith renew,
Help me bear my crosses,
Learning humbleness from You,
Peace mid pain and losses.
May I give You love for love!
Hear me, O my Savior,
That I may in heav'n above
Sing Your praise forever. (LSB 440)

God's mercy today was in discovering this hymn.  His mercy was also in Bettina offering to listen to difficult things, to things that make her hurt for me, so that I wouldn't have to remain silent.  And His mercy was in her using my gizmo to record her singing the Lord's Prayer as a gift for me.

For me.

It was with glad heart that I gave her my second copy of the Treasury of Daily Prayer that I keep in my office and the copy of Luther's Small Catechism I received just a while ago.  Riches she did not have.  Riches that are for her as well as for me....


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

My birdie Sam has sinusitis!  This means I have the joy of giving him nasal drops each day for the next week.  You should have heard him protest having his left nasal passage cleaned out with copious amounts of saline and the careful but tedious application of a syringe to remove the blockage.  Funny thing is, I was worried about the right side of his nose/beak/birdie face.  Once he was done being manhandled, he sat indignantly upon my shoulder, fuming at the world.  When his girlfriend got a chance to step away from the front desk and visit him, he refused to even look at her, scolding her at the top of his lungs when she dared offer her finger in an invitation for a visit up front for a while.

I did envy, once again, my vets ability to handle the birds with such ease.  She can twist and turn them any which way she wants, pulling on that, pressing here, peering there, and they are completely submissive.  Nary a squawk even when she was denuding their flight feathers and clipping their nails.

Needless to say, Sam did not quite give me the same respect when I gave him his first application of nasal medication this evening.

~~~~
Ire seemed to be in the air, for this evening Bettina's youngest cherub was slightly less than angelic!

Although he spent much time curled in my lap and cheerfully walked with me about the neighborhood a second time when E had to go to the bathroom, J felt utterly betrayed when his mother elected me for bedtime duty.  Apparently, I can feed him, play with him, cuddle with him, put him in the car, pull him out of the car, push him about the store, prepare his meals, and even change his diaper, but I am not an acceptable evening companion.

He HOWLED for a very long time, with three instances of my having to put him back into bed and discipline him for leaving, since I was the one who started the process.

Once he finally gave up the battle, Bettina suggest we venture downstairs to see if there was a picture worthy moment awaiting us.  I shall let you be the one to decide.

To express his displeasure, he stripped off his pajamas and the bedding, kicked off the railing, flung all his toys to the floor, and fell asleep with only the bare comfort of his blankie stuffed into his mouth.  After taking a dozen shots between the two of us happy snappers, I was able to re-clothe him, reposition him, and recover him without awaking the little hellion.

Who's the baby charmer?

~~~~
I cannot decide what my high is today.  [Bettina asks her children at the dinner table to share their high and low for the day.]  I could say that it was having my best friend and her cherubs with me while my babies were being attended to by their most wonderful vet.  I could say that it was learning that Bettina scrubbed on my tub for me.  I could say that it was having her run me three different places after the vet, getting 3 of my 4 errands completed (we have yet to figure out how to repair the leaking faucet in my bathroom).  I could say that it was how well-behaved her cherubs were whilst we were trotting about Wal-Mart.  I could say that it was learning I had good news rather than bad with respect to my income taxes (I waited to do the calculations until I had moral support because I was afeared that the opposite would be true and Bettina lovely allowed me to input all my data awhile ago--it seems having to pay a huge state tax bill last Spring because the accountant at work entered my deduction wrong made for a huge refund this year).  I could say that it was learning that hours and hours of Lutheranism talk did not did not put off my dear friend, nor did my bungling answers drive her to despair (though the phrase the proper distinction of Law and Gospel filled her mind all night long as she tried to work in a bit of sleep).


~~~~
Is is a true friend who makes you diabetic cookies or one who lets you pig out on regular ones that would make you sick? 

I would most definitely have not opted for the diabetic choice...but...they were not altogether horrible.  She also cut the dairy content with half-fake butter.  Perhaps had she made them ALL for me, instead of considering her youngest cherub whose body takes offense at dairy products, the difference might have been less noticeable.  However, while they are not quite her world-famous-double-peanut-butter cookies, I shall have no problem consuming as many as are left after being forced to share them with Bettina and her cherubs.

I should get brownie points for only consuming two this evening!

~~~~
Bettina's favorite drink is what I call Bettina Beer, or for the general population, Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade.  Since the refrigerator is quite full with the groceries she brought, we decided the huge snowbanks on my deck would serve as an outdoor cooler.  Is there something sacrilegious about having alcohol surrounded by Scripture references written in the snow?

~~~~
El has been praying through the Psalter, in part because I speak so passionately about what a gift doing so is, how magnificent these prayers are, and what I find within those words.  Two thirds of the way through the process, she is still not all that convinced the Psalter is for anyone but the mature reader, perhaps even the scholar.

I keep telling her that it matters not if she understands what she is praying because the Holy Spirit does...and God's Word will never return void.

However, when she mentioned Psalm 109 as yet another example of the difficulty of the Psalter, I dared to respond with teaching rather than simple encouragement.  [Yes, you can roll your eyes at the prospect of me teaching anyone about Scripture.]

I first recorded the Psalm so that it could fill her ears rather that just rest upon her tongue, fall upon her lips.  Then, I gave her some Myrtle commentary:  a wee bit of my own thoughts and the whole of what I found in Luther's Works, the American Edition, that I purchased for myself a wee bit ago.  [I read her what I found in volume 11 with a little bit of explanation.]

I found it slightly wonderful that the psalm is about the disparaging of reputation, since El has just recently finished listening to my audio recordings and commentary on the first part of the Large Catechism, and I...well...I have struggled of late with something akin to this.  Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Luther's teaching was illuminating for me, and I rather enjoyed my feeble attempt to make this passage of scripture a bit more clear to El.  But...you know what I found most comforting?  Luther's commentary on verse 23:  This verse is too obscure for me to understand.  Luther wrote this!  While he did go on to offer a couple of possible interpretations, it was good to know that I am not the only one truly perplexed at times.

SIGH. 

~~~~
NOTE:  Bettina's husband is of the decided opinion that it is not I who should be the one to use a chainsaw on the downed tree.  "She has trouble mowing!  She certainly cannot be using a chainsaw!"  You know my intrepid friend has entertained the notion that perhaps she could hack away at my tree.  What is proper etiquette on downed trees that have fallen primarily into your neighbors yard?  How long do I have before not dealing with this problem becomes a neighborly offense...if the tree takes up a mere corner of a wide empty space?  Or does size not matter????

~~~~
As I write this, Bettina is catching up on my blog and noted that I AM THE MOST HORRIBLE BEST FRIEND IN THE WORLD!  While I did send her Grace Upon Grace for her naming day and serenaded her several times, I forgot to sing to her here!

Happy Birthday to you (fifteen days late)!

Happy Birthday to you (fifteen days lay)!

Happy Birthday dear Bettina (fifteen days late)!

Happy Birthday to you (fifteen days late)!

Bettina and her cherubs are here!  Three and a half days of visiting and games and movies and TV series and bible reading and praying and hymns and all sorts of glorious things.

Of course, her cherubs had to destroy something straight off.  It always works that way, within a short time, they remind me in some fashion we should not hold our possessions dear.  SIGH.

They, of course, came with many hugs, so what does it matter?

Kashi is most excited to have his beloved Aunt Bettina here and has enjoyed frolicking with her cherubs.  He tires out most easily, but practically dragged us all about the neighborhood twice when we ventured out.  Poor puppydog, he has only been walked twice since I came down with the flu and then the asthma debacle.

Tomorrow, we are all taking Kashi for his acupuncture and for Sam to have a doctor visit.  My birdie has a red nose, which is a sign of impending ill health.  He is FORBIDDEN to get sick.  Can you imagine Bettina, her two cherubs, Kashi, Madeleine, Sam, and I all crammed into an exam room together?  What joy!

The best part, thus far, has not been that Bettina taught me a new game and then promptly beat me three times out of four or that she beat me three times in a row in Rumikub...but that Bettina and I talked Lutheranism for many, many hours.  This time, I actually managed to make the weeist bit of sense when trying to explain the differences between Lutheranism and Protestantism, especially the Baptist church, and some of the proper distinction of Law and Gospel...the difference between receptive spirituality of Luther and the reflective faith of Calvin.


Bettina, most magnificent woman that she is, brought with her the movie Luther!  I did not know such a thing existed.  She found it in a room at her Baptist church and was so surprised that she "borrowed" it so that we could watch it together.  Throughout the movie, she kept asking who this person was or that person.  Trust me, I know far, far too little about Lutheranism and Lutheran history.  Still, I savored the opportunity to watch the movie with her.

I did not particularly care for how Ralph Fiennes portrayed Luther's anguish of soul, making him seem a bit crazy.  Despairing about your faith, assailed by doubts, is not craziness.  In some ways, given our sinful condition, it is the very definition of sanity.  We are such miserable, wretched, snake spit sinners.  How could we ever, in a million years, believe that the Lord of all Creation would send His Son to die for us so that we might have life?

Much of the movie had bits and pieces of which I questioned the validity.  I hesitate to write of one, because I would prefer not to have it dispelled as myth.  But when Luther was despairing to his father confessor, he told Luther to pray:  I am Yours.  Save me! 

So much in those words!  Are they not the same as praying Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!?

I am Yours.  I am Yours because you put your Name on me, because You saved me, because You loved me enough to make me Your dear child.  I am Yours, not satan's.  I am Yours because You called me, claimed me, and do not let me go. 

Save me.  Save me because I cannot help myself, because I am weak, because satan casts all his dominion against me, because I am Yours.  Save me because You can.



I am Yours.  Save me!

Today marks exactly one week since I have had my last asthma attack, the aftershocks if you will from the rather bad one a while ago.  For that, I am most grateful.  Most of the time, I awake coughing and gasping.  But often they have come without warning or, worse, when I am laughing.  I hate that. I absolutely hate how careful I have to be about laughing.  So little joy of late and often a danger.  Thus, I praise God for one week free of the terror of struggling to breath, of coughing so violently that it hurt my back and my head and frightens me further.

Today also marks the beginning of Part II of the Large Catechism in my Book of Concord Readings!  I have finished the Ten Commandments for the one who has been moving along the fastest and turned to the first article:  I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

It is interesting how interrelated the chief six parts of our faith are, how Luther's teaching of the Large Catechism spirals back around itself again and again.  The first article of the Creed covers also the First Commandment and the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer, as they, in turn, are covered by the first article of the Creed.

Three notes I made during this re-teaching of what I have learned:

• Luther comments in the introduction:  Now there properly follows the Creed, which sets forth to us everything that we must expect and receive from God. (LC, Part II, 1)  

I would think that he would have written, which sets forth the sum of our confession.  After all, I see this as a mini-Augsburg Confession.  The creeds came about as so that members of the Church could agree on what it was that they believed, what was pure teaching.  None of this Christ not being divine stuff that was bruited about.  Were Luther alive today, I would think he would have written that it was the cliff notes of our confession.

Instead, he is channeling Kleinig or this is where Kleinig got his receptive spirituality.

Once again, I am struck by the fact that I see Law where there is Gospel.  Gospel gives.  The Creed is about all that God gives to us.

• Luther teaches that the First Article, about God the Father, explains creation. The Second Article, about the Son, explains redemption.  And the Third, about the Holy Spirit, explains sanctification. (LC, Part II, 6)    

So, if the Creed is about what we must expect and receive, then we are to expect life, new life (eternal life), and holiness.

• Different from his teaching for the introduction of the Lord's Prayer, Luther does not focus on God as our Father, as a parent caring for his child.  Instead, he focuses on God as our Creator.  

As Creator, He bears the responsibility of the care for His created:  life, sustenance, protection.  For once, I do not have to struggle through figurative language of parent and child, language that makes no sense to me.  I understand why someone who created something would want to watch over it, care for it, nurture it.  That is imagery which makes sense to me.

Reading it, too, made me think of the teaching on the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer, give us this day our daily bread.  Circles.  Symmetry.  Cohesion.

Or, as El put it, everything fits together most perfectly, most wondrously.

Tonight, I am quite thankful for the opportunity to make these recordings, to teach what I have learned, to remind myself of what is true, to look upon the Gospel and bask in all that He has given me, a beggar.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

God in His mercy compelled a complete stranger to, with my feeble assistance, completely dig my car out from the additional foot or so of snow that was piled upon my home.  I was simply stunned, when in the midst of shoveling my way down my sidewalk toward the car, a voice called out asking if I needed any assistance.  Little did he know.  God knew.

~~~~
As I have written before, one of my favorite passages of the Old Testament is the counsel to have the word every present on our tongues, written upon our foreheads and at the entrances to our homes.  This was for the Jews.  Though no Christian I know takes this literally, I yearn for the Word to be ever before me.  Along the railing of my deck is many inches of snow, a white board if you will.  I wrote upon this white board Psalm references to remind me that which I tend to forget.  I am forgiven.  Each time I let Kashi out, each time I glance through the kitchen window, I see the words and remember the Word. 

~~~~
Walther's Tenth Evening lecture is on Thesis VI:  In the second place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when the Law is not preached in its full sternness and the Gospel not in its full sweetness, when, on the contrary, Gospel elements are mingled with the Law and Law elements with the Gospel.

It is a lecture chock full of practical, specific examples.  But, in sum, it teaches that the proper teaching of the Law will reveal the following:

This, that the Law cannot make any person righteous because it has not a word to say about justifying and saving faith.  That information is found only the the Gospel.  In other words, the Law has nothing to say about grace. (79)

Nothing to say about grace.  I find this ironic, given that much of legalism is taking the Law and applying it to your life to gain righteousness, to achieve holiness.  In fact, much of Christian publishing is essentially about how to's, steps to achieve, to gain, to enlarge faith, godliness, and holiness.

Likewise, every sweet ingredient injected into the Law is poison; it renders this heavenly medicine ineffective, neutralizes its operation. (80)

Therefore, when preaching the Law, you must ever bear in mind that the Law makes no concessions.  That is utterly beside the character of the Law; it only makes demands.  The Law says:  "You must do this; if you fail to do it, you have no record to the patience, lovingkindness, and long-suffering of God; you will have to go to perdition for your wrong-doing." (80)

If the Law does not save us, if Christ fulfilled the Law, then why teach it still?

Rom. 7,14 the same apostle writes:  We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.  When a minister preaches the Law, he must by all means bear in mind that the Law is spiritual; it woks on the spirit, not on some member of the body; it is direction to the spirit in man, to his will, heart, and affections.  That is the way it operates in every instance.  When the Law says:  "Thou shall not kill," that sounds as if applied only to the hand.  But it applies to the heart, as we can see from the Ninth and Tenth Commandment, which prohibit evil desires of the heart. (81)

This fits with what I have found in how Luther spins out his teaching on the Ten Commandments, beginning first with the letter of the law and then the spirit, showing us that the Law cannot be kept by us.  Yet I cannot say as if I have ever heard the Commandments taught that way, as being spiritual.  Yes, the heart was mentioned, but always the focus was on what to do, what not to do, obedience...keeping to the hand, not the heart...except perhaps with murder since Christ Himself spun out that commandment.  But the Law working on my heart, spiritually working?

I have read recently that the three-fold purpose of the Law is as a curb, a guide, and a mirror.  The author assumed what each of those meant was understood and thus never explained them.  I am surmising that the curb is to stop us from doing that which we should not do, that the guide is to show us that which we should do, and that the mirror is a reflection of our true selves, the dirty rotten snake-spit sinners we are before God (new adjective compliments of Mabel Mae).  In this, the mirror would 1) function to maintain that proper relationship between God and man, lest for even the merest moment we believe that we are godly enough to approach the throne on our own and 2) would reveal the depth of God's mercy and grace in the gift of His Son dying on the cross.  What did we do to ever deserve such?  Nothing...the mirror causes us to remember the curb and the guide, necessary because we cannot, will not, ever keep the commandments.  A ludicrous notion given our condition. 

To poor teaching of the Law, teaching that does not accuse, leave the listener in desperate anguish, bring certain death, Walther writes, The reason why so many imagine that they can pass for really good Christians is because their parents reared them to be self-righteous Pharisees; they never made them aware of the fact that they are poor, miserable sinners. (83)

My godmother's two oldest sons, though still wee ones in Kindergarten and first grade I believe, know they are sinners, know they will always be sinners.  They are already accused.  Yet they also have already feasted on the sweet Gospel of forgiveness.  No greater gift does a parent give than the proper distinction between Law and Gospel.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

It looks like I won't be getting any more Psalm recordings, so I badgered someone to read to me last night over the phone since it has been too long since I had the Living Word fill my ears.

I asked for two, which he found excessive given that he didn't understand why I wanted to be read to in the first place.  I told him that he should be thankful for the opportunity to have the Living Word rest on his tongue, fall from his lips.  He countered that no one should be asked to get out of a warm bed, schlep downstairs in the frigid cold, and gather his wits enough to read.  I retorted that 10:11 PM was VERY early in the evening and reading would be as good for him as it would be for me.  I persisted.  He capitulated.

I got my Psalter reading.  But not two.  He read me 18a and 18b, pausing after verse 25 as if he were starting a new psalm.  Still, when he was done, he admitted that he would sleep better having spent time hearing God's Word.  He also recommended I immediately change careers...a negotiator or lawyer or something like that!

As for me, I got to hear once more how God rescues me because He delights in me, causes His light to shine in me, sees me as clean, and is my refuge, rock, shield, stronghold, and salvation.

~~~~
Were my Godmother here with me right now, she would be lecturing me that faith is not what I want.  That all I think about is the I of my faith.  I fear she is right.  I feel she is wrong.

Someone sent me a prayer to start praying for my enemies and I cannot speak the words.  They would be a lie.

Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst command us to love our enemies, and those who defame and injure us, and to pray for them and forgive them; Who Thyself didst pray for Thine enemies, who crucified thee: grant us, we pray, the spirit of Christian reconciliation and meekness, that we may heartily forgive every injury and be reconciled with our enemies. Grant us to overcome the malevolence and offenses of people with Christian meekness and true love of our neighbor. We further beseech Thee, O Lord, to grant to N. and all our enemies true peace and forgiveness of sins; and do not allow them to leave this life without true faith and sincere conversion. And help us repay evil with goodness, and to remain safe from the temptations of the devil and from all the perils which threaten us, in the form of visible and invisible enemies. Amen.

It is an old prayer, one handed down from Christian to Christian, spoken throughout the Church I suppose.  But is it not a prayer I could speak.

I do not want reconciliation with my enemies.  I see no point, no good, in doing so.  To stand before someone who has harmed you, someone you know would harm you again if given the opportunity.  That makes no sense to me.  It is not something I want.

I have spent much of my snowbound time thinking on Pastor W's words, the message he shared about Luther's teaching.  I have read aloud the whole of the Large Catechism Part III several times and then also just 93-98, all the while dwelling upon the 5th petition.  The teaching of the first four petitions enlarged the Lord's Prayer ever so much, truly a marvel for me...and a blessing.  The teaching on the 5th petition troubles me so...and discourages me.

Why is it not okay to say I wish you no harm, may God bring you to His fold, but I do not want anything to do with you?  Why must forgiveness be tied with reconciliation?  Why could not the joining of the body of Christ, should that happen with my enemies, wait until heaven?  I get that through forgiveness we are reconciled to God and for that I am eternally thankful (pardon the pun).  But it makes no sense to pursue reconciliation with those who will most likely just harm you again...or with those who have already caused a lifetime of hurt.

I read that prayer and weep.  My faith is so small, so weak.  So miserable a sinner am I....

SIGH.

No matter how much snow I have to shovel tomorrow, I am finishing Walther's Tenth Evening Lecture!  For there, in those pages, I have found joy and peace and freedom.  Nothing perplexing.  Nothing distressing.  Nothing crushing.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

The woman who's girlfriend rescued me after I keeled over in the snow when my blood sugar dropped organized a helping party to dig out my car when the snow plows finally came through.  However, some thoughtless cad, some insensitive oaf, wedged his car into the open space in front of my car, angled out into the street.  To get out now, I would have to dig up the snow behind my car.  ARGH.

Tomorrow another storm is blowing through, since we are apparently channeling Michigan weather.  At this point, 10-20 inches are predicted to fall.  Where, oh, where, do we put all the snow?

What I do know is that I am terribly sore from the shoveling I did do.  I struggle to help myself sit up and have fallen back against the couch and bed as my arms gave way.  The whole upper half of me is protesting most every movement.  I really should not be shoveling snow.

It hurts even to hold the bible in my hands....

SIGH.

~~~~
The new bible Pastor gave me has started losing pages.  I was extremely disheartened to have some of the maps come away in my hand when flipping through them.

So, I am first thinking that Satan just doesn't want me to have a bible.  SIGH.  I know.  Silly.  Still, I truly am disappointed.

After spending a long while trying to find a non-updated NASB bible again, I believe that I should go with an idea I had in December.  I found a book store that has a great reputation for restoring books.  I could have either this new bible or my original bible rebound and rebound with leather that will last.  The quote I received is $85.  For my original bible, they would be repairing the spine, since it is broken at page 50, and then rebinding it.

I am not sure if this would be the best route; I am also not sure which bible I should bind if I chose to do so...the one with fifteen years of highlights, underlining, and notes...most of them from when I was in Protestant churches or the new one Pastor received that has my praying-the-Psalter highlights and little else. 

What should I do?

~~~~
Someone, in response to this forgiveness stuff, suggested that I read the story of Absalom and David in 2 Samuel.  I read from the rape of Tamar (chapter 13 until the grief of David after Absalom's death in chapter 19).  She asked me:  Was there forgiveness in this particular story and remember… King David was the Apple of God’s eye?

As I wrote in my response:

Okay, well, I read the story, beginning with the rape of Tamar and frankly I DO NOT understand your question.  First, two things I noted about Tamar is that she knew her shame (2nd Samuel 13:13) and that she was told to keep secret what happened (2 Samuel 13:20).  David did seem to forgive Absalom for he allowed him to return (2 Samuel 14:21) and then again instructed his men to deal gently with him (2 Samuel 18:5) when David went to take back his throne.  In fact, David showed forgiveness to the man who cursed him (2 Samuel 16:11...reminiscent of Romans 12:19).  I do not get why Joab murdered Absalom, nor do I understand why he chastised David (2 Samuel 19:5-7).

I am, as you may surmise, eagerly awaiting her response since I am, as you have seen, somewhat of a dunce. Why this passage? Why charge me to remember how God viewed David? Is this about the 5th petition of the Lord's Prayer or forgiveness in general?

Just today El wrote that she admired how I hunger for the bible and how I was so scholarly. Were she to read my answer, she would know I am fairly stupid these days. How much I can blame the MS is beyond me. How much, here, I can blame not truly knowing forgiveness remains unknown.

For example, just today I brought the matter up with my dear friend Bettina again. She, uhm, lashed out last spring and hurt me. She asked me to forgive her this summer. I am not sure if I ever really said the words I forgive you to her because I adamantly believe there is no need for forgiveness. She lashed out because she was hurt and never intended, truly, to hurt me.  If fielding her blows is what helps her cope with a genuinely difficult time in her life, then my feet will always be planted in front of her.  I know what it is like to be overwhelmed with hurt, to feel utterly desperate.  I would not wish that even on my greatest enemy...not if I were to stop and think about the consequences of such a wish. 

She told me today she rather adamantly believes I am wrong in such thinking and that I am wrong because I do not really understand forgiveness.

SIGH.

~~~~

El also wrote a bit about Lutheranism I promptly loved:

Isn't it amazing how Lutheran theology seems to have ALL the pieces.  It's almost kind of annoying and embarrassing and overwhelming.   It's so different than our culture that takes a little bit from here and little from there and comes up with each person's personalized interesting creation of the truth.  In the end, Lutheran-Christianity is so comforting, but initially it's startlingly different.

Oh, yes, dear El.  Oh, yes!  Thank you for sharing such beautiful words with me!

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

I learned something new today, I think.  Before going out to try and shovel, I ate a salad with chicken and sauteed asparagus.  A rather tasty, full meal.  Then, after clearing my sidewalk and working on my car, I started to feel shaky.  I was not hot, so I ignored it, thinking I was just getting tired.  With the street still full of snow, there was not much I could do anyway.  Then, I became clammy and the world began to recede and I realized my blood sugar was dropping.  I hollered out to a neighbor and keeled over in the snow.  My second face plant!

Her girlfriend is a nurse and actually gave me glucose gel and checked my blood sugar.  It was 62.  Apparently, exertion can make your blood sugar drop if you have diabetes or if you struggle with hypoglycemia.  I wish someone had told me that.

SIGH.

Yesterday, when all was said and done, the measuring stick in my yard marked 28 inches.  The current forecast for Tuesday is another snowstorm with approximately 5 inches of additional snow. 

~~~~
Bettina called, offering to play Scrabble with me and watch Dr. Who!  One of her birthday gifts was a subscription to Netflix.  Basically, we can now watch my beloved Sci-fi (I have corrupted her) even when we are not together...we can still be together!  So, to sum, her digital recorder will help her be with me in the ER and Netflix will help us share things together though 157 miles separate us.  You've just got to love technology!  Sprint PCS, Skype, digital recorders, and now Netflix.

She is trying to show me that I am not alone.

~~~~
Kashi has been swimming in the snow.  Each time I watch him, I burst into laughter, momentarily forgetting how difficult this week has been.

~~~~
Much is given by our Lord.  My writing student's mother and sister offered to come over and help me shovel this day.  Since the street is not yet plowed and there is no parking, I had to rain check, but the fact that she texted such generosity brought tears to my eyes once more.  I was completely surprised and thought immediately how gracious God can be.

~~~~
While I have started Walther's 10th evening lecture, my mind keeps returning to Pastor W's teaching on paragraphs 93-98 in the Large Catechism, Part III on the 5th petition that I posted yesterday.

It is difficult for me to truly understand how the condition God has placed upon forgiving us, forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us, can be for our good. Yet I know that it is because God is good.  And I have learned so much, so very much in the first four petitions.  Every time I hear the Lord's Prayer recited now, I want to hold up my hand and ask everyone to slow down, to savor the gift of the words God has given us in this prayer and to reflect on what we are actually praying in them.  Can I not learn this, too?

It just sounds so much like Law.

And his comment about it being a sign that we are forgiven, an opportunity to wrap ourselves in the gifts of the Sacraments once more, is like a key to my jail cell just out of my grasp.  My arm is wedged as far as possible between the bars, my fingertips scraping along the floor mere millimeters away.  I see the truth.  I recognize it as such...and freedom for me...yet I cannot take hold of it.

Forgiving others who have hurt me, harmed me, wronged me being the sign that I am forgiven?  To me, that still speaks of Law...law that I have fail utterly.  Again, I know my sin.  I know I have not much seen this sign in my life.  I worry.  I fret.  I feel the failure once more.

His encouragement was for me to think of this sign the way I once encountered absolution itself:  it was just something I had not really heard of before and so had not used.  Now, trusting in the Lord's goodness, I should venture out and make use of it. 

Pastor W maintains that doing so will change me, will be the sign working in me.  He wrote that like every sacrament, such a thing IS given for our comfort; it doesn't hinge so much upon our action (though every sacrament does involve an action of some sort) as upon God's promise.  And so we are to remember that, as with the Sacraments, forgiving those who trespass against us is not something we have to come up with the power to do; it is a gift that God is waiting to give us!   

A way to forgive my enemies is to begin praying for them in the way he suggested, to implore God to bless them, to look upon them with favor, to bring His forgiveness to them, to ask God to transform and renew their lives.  I want to do this.  I do.  But I have no words.  I do not know how.

Allow the Spirit to work, Myrtle.  Trust that He will.

I am not speaking of those who have hurt my feelings or have caused offense.  True, I have much to learn of forgiveness there, for I have not often been on the receiving end of the same.  I have know much criticism in my life.  You are selfish.  You are lazy.  You are inappropriate.  You are an embarrassment.  You are grotesque.  You sneeze wrong.  You dress wrong.  Your hair is wrong.  You are unlovable.  Just this week, once again, you are not good to be around.  

I have had the things I have done, even as a young child, cast up before me again and again as who I am, as all I will ever be.  And, when I have heard the words of forgiveness, most of the time even though forgiveness has been given how I have been received or treated changed.  I do not truly understand forgiveness that is not rooted in the past, forgiveness that would gain me my salvation, but an act taught as then.  I am struggling to learn the forgiveness of now.

Allow the Spirit to work, Myrtle.  Trust that He will.

I have been accusing of stealing when I did not.  I have been accused of cheating when I did not.  I have been accused of plotting and destroying when I was not.  I have been accused of being hateful when truly I was not.

I have been yelled at, screamed at, and hit.  I have been maligned and slandered.  I have been left alone when truly helpless.  I have been lashed out against.  I have been shunned.  I have been ridiculed.

Again and again and again I have been judged and found wanting. 

Yet, I am not speaking merely of these.  I am speaking of murderers, rapists, and abusers.  Even they deserve our forgiveness...my forgiveness.  What such has done to me is no different than what I have done to others, to my Savior.

Is this really a gift for me?

So confusing.  So very difficult even the thought.  Yet if this is what God is teaching us in the fifth petition, I want to do this.  I have not the words.  I asked for help with them.   

Lord, I believe!  Help my unbelief.

I genuinely do not know how in the world I will be able to dig myself out of this snow.

To my great sorrow, during the night I lost my photina tree in the back yard.  Each spring, it is filled with red leaves that deepen to emerald green.  It is also covered with tiny white flowers.  The weeks it is in bloom are some of my best of the year, a constant reminder of how loving our Creator is to gift us so with such beauty.

In falling, it has damaged my fence.  I am hoping that when all is said and done, when the tree is removed, the fence will remain standing because Kashi is a leash dog.  He requires a fence to keep him home and safe.

So, aside from the near impossibility of my shoveling enough snow to get myself to work on Monday or (hopefully) Tuesday if the office is closed on Monday, I cannot begin to think how to deal with the tree (it is in my neighbors yard as well as threatening the power lines with the one portion still standing.  I have a chain saw, but am not sure I can get it started.  If I can, I can schelp the pieces up to curb and have the county pick them up.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

However, seeing the downed tree, I am VERY thankful for my bell-rope-pull fiasco of last night for I am convinced had I not that tree would have come down as well...taking out my power.

Right now, all I am doing is concentrating on keeping up a path for Kashi on the back deck and down the steps so that he can do his business.  Once in the yard, he's on his own.  Needless to say, he is trying to learn to swim through snow.  I do not envy him, my poor puppydog!

A church just collapsed in DC.  I believe this news is only the beginning of such.  Many, many people are in need of prayer for safety and well-being...and a great measure of patience and endurance heaped upon them.

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.

Kashi loves his babies ever so much!  Every time I pick them up, gather the collection back around his bed, he slowly but systematically distributes them back about the house.  When they are beyond my ability to sew (he tends to disembowel them after breaking their "neck") and I try to throw them away, he sits in front of the trash can and howls until I retrieve the broken-squeaker, empty-stuffing, ratty baby.  He will carry it lovingly back to his bed and lay down for a rest with it tucked beneath his chin, so as to recover from the trauma of my egregious betrayal.


I have been crying a lot in the past two days.  His solution is to keep putting one of his babies next to me on the couch.  Tonight, my beloved buttercup, my precious petunia, is curled at my feet, encircled by 11 of his favorite babies.  Four more are beside me. 

~~~~
Tonight, Bettina ordered a digital recorder.  I am selfish enough to be delighted with glee at the thought of all the audio clips she will be sending me!  I promptly logged onto Amazon to send a microphone her way.

~~~~
Tonight, worried about the snow piling up and bending over my trees, I tried to clear the snow off a branch threatening my power supply.  Picture a small child yanked upward after pulling on a bell rope.  I pulled down, the snow fell off (on top of me), and the sudden lack of frozen precipitation weight propelled the tree branch upward.  Having not lost my death grip, I, too, was yanked upwards until I let go.  I then fell into the more than foot of snow already piled up on the ground.  Soaking me head to toe.  I've been shivering for hours.  The tree branch is bent over once more.

~~~~
Tonight, I have been chewing over an answer I received to paragraphs 93-98 in Part III of the Large Catechism on the 5th petition of the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us:

There is here attached a necessary, yet comforting addition:  "As we forgive."  He has promised that we shall be sure that everything is forgiven and pardoned, in the way that we also forgive our neighbor.  Just as we daily sin much against God, and yet he forgives everything through grace, so we, too, must ever forgive our neighbor who does us injury, violence, and wrong, shows malice toward us, and so on.  If, therefore, you do not forgive, then do not think that God forgives you (Matthew 18:23-25).  But if you forgive, you have this comfort and assurance, that you are forgiven in heaven.  This is not because of your forgiving.  For God forgives freely and without condition, out of pure grace, because He had so promised, as the Gospel teaches.  But God says this in order that He may establish forgiveness as our confirmation and assurance, as a sign alongside of the promise, which agrees with this prayer in Luke 6:37,  "Forgive, and you will be forgiven."  Therefore, Christ also repeats it soon after the Lord's Prayer, and says in Matthew 6:14, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you," and so on.

This sign is therefore attached to this petition.  When we pray, we remember the promise and think, "Dear Father, for this reason I come and pray for You to forgive me, not so that I can make satisfaction or can merit anything by my works.  I pray because You have promised and attached the seal to this prayer that I should be as sure about it as though I had Absolution pronounced by You Yourself."  For Baptism and the Lord's Supper--appointed as outward signs--work as seals (Ephesians 1:13).  In the same way also, this sign can serve to confirm our consciences and cause them to rejoice.  It is especially given for this purpose, so that we may use and practice forgiveness every hour, as a thing that we have with us at all times. (LC, Part III, 93-98)

promise, sign, and seal...

SIGH.

Below are the questions that I asked:

1. Is every time the word promise(d) used in these two paragraph referring to back to the second sentence of the first paragraph?  And if so, is the promise that everything is forgiven and pardoned or that it is forgiven and pardoned in the way that we also forgive our neighbor?  Or another promise, such as Matthew 1:21 or 1 John 1:9 or Genesis 3:15?  How can we be pardoned and forgiven in the way we forgive our neighbors since, as sinners, we stink at forgiving one another?
2. What is the sign mentioned in the 8th sentence of the first paragraph?  But God says this in order that He may establish forgiveness as our confirmation and assurance, as a sign alongside of the promise, which agrees with this prayer in Luke 6:37,  "Forgive, and you will be forgiven."   Does this mean that our ability to forgive others is the sign?  It sounds that way, but For Baptism and the Lord's Supper--appointed as outward signs--work as seals (Ephesians 1:13) sounds like the sign is the Sacraments.
3. I get that if the sign is the Sacraments, then they are there to remind us of the things we cannot see, i.e. the work of the Cross.  I love Luther's comment in LC IV ...faith must have something that it believes, that is of which it takes hold and upon which it sand and rests.  So faith clings to the water and believes that in Baptism, there is pure salvation and life.  This is not through the water (as we have stated well enough), but through the fact that it is embodied in God's Word and institution, and that God's name abides in it.  (29)  Is that what he means here, too?  But if so, how can that be if the sign is the "addition," is our forgiving others?
4. How is the "addition" not Law?
5. If the purpose of this prayer is that we may recognize and receive such forgiveness (reception) (88), why does it seem to have a caveat that depends on us doing something?

I am not quite sure that I can even begin to grasp the answer I received.  Therefore, I do not wish to attempt to fumble my way through it here yet more than a wee bit below.  I also received an audio clip to further explain the answer; I highly recommend that you listen to it!  Then, perhaps, you could enlighten me as to the Gospel view of these two paragraphs.  Because, if you have not already surmised, I am quite aware of its Law view.

What struck me, however, is Pastor W's teaching that when we are to pray for our enemies, it does not mean that we are to merely bring them before our Father in Heaven, to ask Him to...perhaps...uhm...correct them or to protect us.  No, it means that we should implore Him to favor them, to shower His blessings upon them!

The Gospel in Luther's teaching?  Several things actually.  One of them is that the sign is, then, essentially our forgiving someone, since on our own, we cannot do such a thing.  As Pastor W's explained:

With our enemies, we are to remember the promise and use the sacrament--the sign, if you will.  So, you're trying to hurt me?  To make me suffer?  Guess what!  I forgive you.  I wipe out that sin.  I will not treat you as your sins have deserved.  I will pray for you and for God to bless you.  When we do this, it is the very same as the water of baptism washing over us, the Eucharist entering our bodies; it is the sign, seal, proof that our sins are wiped out and gone.  And so to our enemies we can rejoice, "YOU thought you were doing me damage; GOD flipped it and gave it to me as a gift and the very seal of my salvation."

Hmmm....uhm...come again?

The part of his answer I did savor?  That he thought it was wonderful I was struggling with this bit of the Catechism instead of just glossing over it...that and the fact he said it was a difficult passage to grasp!

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

I learned today that there will be no more lessoning for me and no more parking lot confession/absolution.  So I am left to figure out things on my own.  I have little hope for success in that.

Since I have no more lessoning, I cannot ask Pastor about the Kleinig book he gave me. I guess I should have read faster.  Since I do not understand the first part of the section on prayer and it only frustrates me further, I have decided to stick with Walther.  There is simply no point to banging my head against a brick wall.

I would like to note that after hearing such distressing news about lessoning, I ended the day spending much time closeted with the CEO and my boss, during which she told the CEO the reason for all the unfinished 2009 objectives that were hers was me...inadequate skill, ill health, not working hard enough.  So I have until the end of February to finish them, only I still have to do 12 months of work in the 10 months I'll have left.  Oh, and how I have to go to training from 7:00 to 10:00 at night to be a better graphics designer.  I am not, not, not a graphics designer.  I am a communications manager.  I dabble in InDesign only.  One project, the website, I presented to her at the beginning of August.  Month after month went by with my trying to get her to make a decision on the comps, to move forward.  How, pray tell me, is that my failure?

Each morning, I now have to write a list of what I will be doing.  Each afternoon I have to justify my labors for the day.

I am a horrible human being.  I am a horrible communications manager.  I am a horrible employee.  The bottle God uses to capture my tears has surely overflowed.

Frankly, I could do without this day.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

Today at work, I interviewed a resident volunteer who would like to be a part of our new blog, but has trouble writing.  I savored the exercise of trying to capture his voice and string together words in such a way that he would feel as if he wrote it, not I, when all is said and done.  I am pleased with the first draft.

I am more pleased, however, with the interview, for it brought an unexpected moment which took me outside everything else if but briefly.

You see, he nearly died in a car accident 11 years ago.  He survived, but was left with the horrible aftermath of traumatic brain injury.  As we were talking, his answer to why he could not keep a job surprised me.  I felt sure it would the physical.  For one, he has to wear a brace on his ankle full-time because the signals from his brain to that ankle no longer work.  But his answer was mental.  Not stress, but being misunderstood and finding himself in conflict without ever really knowing why.

In interviews, he would tell the prospective boss about his brain injury and that he needed people to understand that he was slower, did things differently, and was sometimes confused.  What he tried to say oft came out differently than he intended but did not know that was so.  For a while, at each job, people would accommodating.  Soon, however, because he looked "fine" on the outside, they expected him to act the same as everyone else.  He is not.

I almost laughed out loud for the sweet fellowship of that moment.  Instead, I told him that very morning my boss had called and asked a question I was not expecting.  I couldn't answer it.  No matter how hard I tried to get the words out, I could not.  I grew more and more frustrated as she grew more and more impatient with me until I finally blurted out, "I'm doing what's on the list!"

After she hung up the phone, I received three irate emails about being sarcastic.  I was NOT being sarcastic.  I could not tell her what I was working on at the moment if my very life depended on it.  I could not access that information, nor could I think of a way to describe it to her.

He started crying.  A grown man.  A stranger.  He started crying because never had he heard from another person that she, too, understood being trapped inside yourself, watching things happen you are helpless to prevent...being misunderstood and misperceived no matter how hard you try to explain what is real and what is the injury.

Oh, how I wish I had a great big ugly misshapen head.  That way, people around me would remember that while I do not have a traumatic brain injury, I have a disease that functions much the same way. That way I might have the human grace I need to bear this cross.

The morning was horrible, but the afternoon was worse.  I learned that I made a mistake yesterday that could cost our organization $20,000.  In short, I failed to put a second copy of the grant proposal in the package to the grantmaker.  Such is enough to be disqualified.  We have been funded each time we have applied to this particular grantmaker, and I jeopardized that.  I overnighted a second copy this evening, but I have no clue if it will be accepted or not.  The application guidelines indicate there are no exceptions for failing to follow directions.

To make matters worse, when my boss told me, I grew so angry I swiped up a white-out tape ribbon and threw it across my office.  She was horrified and upset by my action.  I HATE WHAT I AM BECOMING!

I hate what I am becoming and I hate that I am alone in such and I hate that when I trying to explain I am rebuffed or dismissed or belittled.  Oh, we all forget sometimes.

I could have joined him in tears, but I did not.  I savored the moment, though, of giving someone comfort in the very area that frightens and frustrates me as well. 

~~~~
I really do not know what to do with Kleinig.  All that waiting and anticipation and I am not sure what to do.

The devastation of sin is most evident in the difficulty that we have with prayer.  Since God has created us and sustains us day by day in our journey here on earth, we are dependent on Him for everything, even life itself.  Every moment we receive everything, in the physical and spiritual realm, from His hands.  What's more, in the first two commandments of the Decalogue He give us His name and its use by us in prayer.  Prayer, then, should come as easily and naturally to us as breathing or eating.  Yet, we all know how hard it is to pray.  Prayer, mostly, seems to go against the grain.  Unless we are quite desperate and have reached the end of our rope, we would rather not ask God for help; we prefer to manage by ourselves, even though as Christians we know this is not possible.

We know that we should pray.  We would like to pray more regularly, ardently, and spontaneously.  The harder we try, the more we seem to fail.  But that's how it's meant to be.  Christ let us fail when we pray by ourselves so that we rely on His intercession for us.  Oddly, our success in prayer comes form our personal failure and our willingness to carry on as He works for us and with us. (156-157)

SIGH.

Why in the world does this seem so strange to me????

If you have read even one entry here, you know I am no "spiritual dynamo," to use Kleinig's term from yesterday's quote.  Not at all.  In fact, you could rightly claim you never knew a weaker Christian.  Here I have been given the most precious gift of all, pure teaching, solid doctrine, and I struggle like an aspen leaf clinging to a tree in the fall.  I am sure the inevitable is coming and I shall be torn from the branch.  Great gusts are buffeting me about and I see nothing but death before me at times.  What faith is there in that?

Yet there are things I know to be true, things I knew to be true before I ever read the Augsburg Confession.  And then there are the most wondrous things I have learned from Luther and Pastor, namely the marvelous mercy of objective grace and the gifts of Christ in baptism (I am baptized) and in the sweet, sweet blessing of His body and blood in the Lord's Supper.  

I have a dear, dear friend who is trying to give me what I crave even though she does not join in the Lutheran confession.  When bewailing my mistake over the phone while we were playing Scrabble (I channeled my anger and frustration into beating the pants off her) and growing ever more upset, Bettina began typing "You are forgiven." into the chat window of the program we were using to play each other online.  You are forgiven.  You are forgiven. You are forgiven.  You are forgiven.  Always.

She also prayed with me.  I tried to reach Pastor.  I really, really wanted him to at least pray for me.  But he was busy.  So after we had hung up and then she had called back to tell me about the snow at her house and then we hung up again, I called her back and asked her if we could pray the new prayer I found (Saturday, January 16th entry).  I thought, perhaps, we could do so with her husband, but it ended up just being the two of us.  I asked her to be the first voice, so that I could be the second, the one to repeat over and over and over again: Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner. 

Yes, I do not pray for myself really.  I do not because my greatest struggle is reconciling my experience with what I know to be true, is believing that the good things God has for me are not merely for when He takes me to His throne in heaven.  I know my sin and it is great, how could I even think to ask for help.  And help has rarely been forthcoming so why ask when I know that doing so will not make a difference, that God has "other" lessons for me to learn than those of family, love, forgiveness, belonging...at least not in this world.

Oh, I know it is wrong, but I do cling fiercely to what I will have when I come before my Savior for the last time.  I just simply do not believe all the promises about this life are for me.  Some, perhaps, but not like they are for others.

So, I have received great riches and yet still look to the dross on the side of the road.  I know I am weak and miserable.  I know this.

Yet, as I wrote yesterday, I have never seen prayer as a work, so it is never been something I have failed at or thought negatively about until that Sunday sitting in the pew and hearing something in one of Pastor's answers that fundamentally rocked my world with regard to prayer.  I have anguished over this and have really despaired over how long it has taken us to go through the Large Catechism on the Lord's Prayer, when I know the answers to my questions are not in there, but I also know I need to understand this teaching, to take it within me, before I can get to my answers.  Pastor grows very frustrated with me, at times, in part because of my impatience to learn.  Seven months I have been twisting in the wind with regard to prayer.  I find it rather torturous.

Yet I have never seen prayer as a work, so it has never been a failure as Kleinig describes.  I do not understand that.

From the first moment the Holy Spirit gave me the epiphany of Jesus Christ, I prayed.  I pray all day long, this sort of dialogue with God.  I pray for friends and family, but for strangers, too.  I pray for people I see in the grocery store lines. I pray for the people on the street asking for money.  I pray down the church list.  I pray for Bettina's and G-man's whole family, though even after 12 years I struggle to keep who's who straight.  I pray for the children (and their parents) whom Pastor's Lovely Bride encounters in her job as a pediatric oncology nurse.  I pray for Pastor's professors at grad school, for his other parishioners, for those he encounters simply because he is bound by the white collar.  I pray for Pizza Man's staff and the people who come into his restaurant.  For his sister's business and the incredible outreach she has there in holding Spanish bible studies.  I pray for my old Scripture Memory Partner and her volunteering.  I even pray for my boss (that one is a bit hard).  I pray for my godparents and their children and his job and those he encounters there. I pray for Bootstrap (a fellow Texan) whom I've recently befriended, her husband (a church elder), their son (a pastor), his wife and their children.  I pray for the mailman and even for the people in the ER who frustrate me so.  I pray for my pharmacist and the families in our communities at work and for the HVAC man who always tries to help me when he comes by (this past time, taking pity on my huddled form on the couch miserable with the flu, he emptied my trash and replaced the bag for me).  And, truly, this is the tip of the iceberg of what I pray.

Mostly, I give God a running update on my life, on His world, and set it before Him.  I marvel at the multitude of small ways in which He is at work.  I wonder at the beauty and complexity of His creation.  I thank Him continuously for the precious gift of the Living Word.

So, while I have been worried about Lutheran doctrine on prayer and I segment myself off from the whole act, I do pray.  I savor praying.  I enjoy praying with others.  I can pray for long periods without really noticing the passage of time.  And every darned day I still find myself marveling at what can be gained from praying the Psalter.  Because of this, I often pray a dozen or more Psalms at a time, Oh, this one is good, so I will just continue one.  Oh, and that one, too.  Still, don't forget the other one.  I listen to the 18 psalms Pastor recorded for me and long for more, though he has not done them in a while.  Words are simply not sufficient to describe how I feel about the Psalter, what a gift the Holy Spirit opening my eyes to these prayers has been.

Thus, I do not know prayer as Kleinig is describing.  Am I crazy?  Or is the gift I have in prayer literally that--a gift from God, merely a mystery, an utter conundrum with respect to my poor, miserable, weak faith?

Yes, I have been desperate and at the end of my rope and cried out to God, daring the impropriety of doing so.  But that does not define or restrict my prayer.  For I have always known, from the beginning, that I had Christ as my high priest and the Holy Spirit as my intercessor.  With those two flanking me, how could I go wrong?

I may struggle mightily to pray for myself, but I do reach other to others to pray for me, essentially borrowing their voices, their lips, their words when I cannot speak myself.

Perhaps this is why I revel in praying the Psalter so very much, so very deeply.  For there, God has given me words to pray for myself in such a way that I can speak them myself.

So, where do I fit in with Kleinig?


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

Today, I fell on the remaining snow at the end of my sidewalk, wacked my thigh on the corner of a desk, crashed my kneecap into a post, got a carpet burn on my leg, and smashed my fingers in a door. Did you know it is possible to get a goose egg on your fingers? I didn't! I cannot get my ring off. Frankly, I am wondering if I should have gotten out of bed!


~~~~

A sense of spiritual frustration, coupled with the longing for spiritual fulfillment, is common among devout Christians all over the world.  Our disappointment is precipitated by the difficulties that we experience in prayer and in our personal devotional life.  Here we experience the biggest gap between the way things should be and the way things actually are.

Our sense of failure in prayer is worsened by much of the teaching on prayer in the Church.  This teaching implies that if only we were more disciplined and more methodical and more spiritual we would succeed and become spiritual dynamos.  Yet, not matter how hard we try, we just can't seem to meet our spiritual goals.  Again and again we set out to improve and develop a disciplined practice of regular daily prayer.  We might have success for a while, but it does not seem to last.  Again and again we fail to achieve our goals, and a sense of disappointment sets in.  Others may be good at praying, but we aren't.  It may be right for them, but not for us.  Worst of all, we feel guilty about our failure to be people of prayer.  The guiltier we feel, the harder it is to pray.  Satan uses our guilt to undermine our faith so that we give up on daily prayer.  (152)

I am finally there, finally at Kleinig's chapter on prayer.  And I am confused.  Already.

I would never say that prayer is where I experience the biggest spiritual gap.  Nope.  Not at all, though I have despaired here how unbalanced, off-kilter I have been about prayer of late. All my spiritual life I have thought one thing, I heard...or thought I heard...another this past summer and the roller coaster ride began.

I actually think the gap between the way things should be and how they are is really any place else but prayer...for me.  Nor, really, was disappointment ever a thing I associated with prayer.  Perhaps because at times prayer is all I had?  Or...was it...is it...because despite the things I experienced when I was young, I never prayed for rescue, not specifically that is...not believing that rescue was possible.  Life was what it was.


Perhaps that was my error?  Prayer was always thanksgiving and praise and an opportunity to lift up others.  The bits about my life were more conversation, this is who I am, where I am, but, hey, you know all that, you know all George's suffering, too, but I want to bring him before You anyway.  He needs You.


Prayer was fellowship...with God...with other Christians.  Prayer, more often than any other time in my life, was a time when I was not alone.


My frustrations in prayer came more from being the outlier, the spiritual oaf who, during requests for prayer, actually shared her own personal struggles, instead of the friend's husband's co-worker's mother who was ill.  After all the prayer requests were laid out before the group, the leader would then start to divvy them up.  Who will take Flo?  And Cyrus?  How about Emily?  And Myrtle?  Ah, the last was always met with uncomfortable silence.  I was the one who dared speak of her own sin!


The spiritual oaf who prayed all the time, for others, in all things...out and about, in church, in bible study, with friends, alone in the car, in the grocery store.


The spiritual oaf who reveled in every opportunity to join hands and come before the Lord with others.


I miss that.


So, uhm, I really and truly do not get this opening bit of Kleinig's message and am a bit fearful that all this time of plowing through the first part to get to prayer will actually have been in vain...so dense am I....


Try as I might, I am not sure I had any spiritual goals with prayer.  Oh, my greatest goal was to build my faith enough to lay aside my struggles, to trust enough, to "let go and let God."  Failed miserably at that one.  But prayer goals?  I am not sure I ever had that pressure.


Perhaps...I mean, could it be that this was so because I never saw/do not see prayer as a work?  How could it be when prayer is, essentially as I understood it to be, a conversation between God and I, lead by Christ, facilitated by the Holy Spirit?  Even the poorest, meanest, most miserable wretch of a sinner can pray, can cry out to God.


Part of what I have learned from Luther's Large Catechism is that the bible actually has all these promises tied to prayer.  I am not sure I had ever considered a one of them.  Of the verses I have encountered thus far, most of them certainly have never been taught to me as a promise concerning prayer.  Yet the strange thing is that the most promises I learn, the more I feel as if I do not know anything all about prayer.

Why is it that I will call Bettina and ask her to pray for me when I do not pray for myself?  Doesn't that make no sense at all?

Why is it that God would bring me to a pastor for whom prayer, apart from the written prayers of the liturgy and heritage of faith, is a primarily a silent, private act?  Try as I might to ask for prayer, unless I speak the word now, he thinks I am asking him to go off and prayer elsewhere, elsewhen.  If I leave a voice mail or email or text message, asking for prayer, he does not call and pray with me, perhaps because it is past the time in which came my request.  Not, mind you, that I do not covet his private prayers, but I ask him to pray for me or for a certain situation in my life because I cannot.  I ask him to speak the words that I long to hear, that his tongue and lips be mine if but for a while.  From time to time, he has understood the now, but not really.  It is not inherent with him.  Never once, aside from the two part written prayers of the liturgy or the Psalter, has he asked me if I would like to pray with him, to join my voice to his as he goes before our Father.

Prayer is the one way in which I feel as if I stand completely apart from the Lutheran confession.  Oh, how I have come to cherish those written prayers of liturgy and heritage.  They teach me, they sustain me, even when I dare not voice them in prayer but merely read them silently.  They are a beacon of truth and a constant reminder of the relationship between the Creator and His created.  I savor them, I cherish them, and I rather greedily ask others to pray those liturgical, historical prayers with me.

Still, I long to sit down with others, join hands, and go around the circle, the room, lifting our voices to our God and King.  I long for Pastor to pray with me, not just for me, so that I might learn more of what I lack in the knowledge and understanding of my faith, so that I might rehearse the truths that I have been given thus far.  I long for the fellowship I have lost, save but here and there when Bettina picks up the phone and joins with me in approaching our Father in Heaven.



What do I understand of Kleinig, what does make sense to me from this opening passage?


That satan is crafty in every way, ever on the prowl, ready to pounce and separate us from our Father, using others and even ourselves to twist and turn us about so thoroughly so as to keep us from seeing what is up and down, right and left, is most certainly true.  Have you not see such spread across these virtual pages in my struggles magnified so greatly of late even though I have finally found doctrine I can claim as home?


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!