Ex's and The Exodus

My reading for 2/1/14 was Exodus 15-17.  Talk about “euphoric high!” It startled me how this relates to us when we mourn a former or ended relationship.  Many people speak of the pain of "letting go." We don't like to surrender anything, as evidenced by our unwillingness to surrender to the Lord

In chapter 15 the Israelites are dancing and singing that they’ve been freed from the 400 years of slavery and hard work and disrespect of the Egyptians.  Well, all the way up to vs 21.  Verse 15:22-24 takes an ugly turn, when no good water is found in the desert, and “the people grumbled against Moses.”  That’s real gratitude for you!!  14:25 Moses throws a tree into bitter water, making it sweet.  By verse 27 the travelers arrived at Elim, “Twelve Springs of Water”.  Problem Solved…. Good time to stop talking about Egypt!!

Chapter 16:1-3, they set out to continue the nomadic adventure to "Promised Land."  By verse 3, they are griping and grumbling that they wished they were just “back in Egypt, we had plenty of meat to eat and plenty of bread there.” They just wished they'd died in Egypt, as to have to die now on this trip to some “milk and honey” promised property.  They had NO FAITH whatsoever that God would provide a friend (oops, I meant food) for them on their adventure of following Him.  NOPE, this Guy with the Angels, the Miracles, the Red Sea parting, the defeat of the finest army of the world at the time, the Cloud,  The Fire in the Sky…. (the last 3 blessings you received – oops, just a slip!)…. Well HE just did NOT seem to be able to take care of them….  “Egypt was pretty nice compared to this FAITH deal!!”

So, in 16:4, God starts telling Moses of His meat and bread provision plan.  A little unique, but when you’re traveling light, Fast Food may be the best way to go!!  And so He flies in meat, and dumps “daily bread”…..one verse after they are done complaining….( I don’t know that the point is: “don’t grumble”, because God told Moses in 16:12 He had “heard the grumbling”.)  Maybe it’s a good thing to let Him know how you feel:  Job, Jeremiah, Jonah, (YOU) and a host of others in the Bible did so, and He didn’t seem to take offense.  He did straighten them out, nicely! 

Fast forward to: ScreamFree Living:  “Patterns are powerful, in that they give use familiar stability, even if that familiarity leaves us miserable.”  (Egypt wasn’t REALLY all that great. The Government had ordered infanticide, and “More Brick, Less Straw” as in Exodus 5:10-11…and Pharoah-Health-O-Care was simple: work more, or you get beaten”)  So why the sudden flashbacks PAST all the miracles since then, to the time in Egypt? Well, it was secure back there, and it was all they’d known, and they knew what tomorrow would bring….and they didn’t need a Month-at-a-Glance Planner!!  Life was simple, do the same thing everyday; and you Did Not have to camp out all the time!!

Again, a word from ScreamFree Living: “It is far easier to complain than to change.”

I can’t make this stuff up! It’s in my daily Bible reading, and ScreamFree is in my brain from 6 years of using it!  Take a hint...as a young Pastor friend said to me recently:  "It took one night to get the Israelites out of Egypt.... and 40 years to get Egypt out of the Israelites!"  If you've been delivered from something, (or someone)...LET IT GO!!

Who You Know....

Sometimes we hear a person say, most often after a challenging time with even the smallest bureaucracy, "Well, it's who you know that makes all the difference."  The conversation will continue similar to: "The new employee didn't know me, and couldn't understand what I was trying to do, which was always simple before."   The suggestion is, if you have enough "pull" or "influence", or happen to have a "friend on the inside," things can go much better for you in negotiating anything.  There's a country song with lyrics: "I've got friends in low places!"  Most of the time, we want friends in HIGH places.

What I discovered in the business world, and even in many settings, it's not so much "who you know," as it is "WHO knows YOU."  When you visit a business where the owner knows you personally, or at least a high level manager/supervisor, things are going to go SO much better in your exchange.  Just the fact that I'm aware of someone's position earns me little.  But when an upper level employee or business owner knows you, often the "protocol" and "best business practices" are completely ignored as that person takes care of your need or request.

Very similar to me is our relationship with the Lord.  Many claim to know Him... yet He warned in John that many would claim to know Him, but He would not know or acknowledge them in the final days.  It's knowing that HE KNOWS ME that is the great comfort, and "the door opener" for us.  Knowing that you are KNOWN to HIM is the greatest comfort in this world, whether we ever see any particular 'benefits' or 'favors" in the lifetime!

Praying Through

As I was praying for a friend registering for classes at his new University (transfer students get last and latest choice!), I thought of something I read in Mark Batterson's book, The Circle Maker. Joshua 6:1-2 "Now Jericho was TIGHTLY SHUT because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I HAVE GIVEN Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors."" 
Joshua's job was to pray and circle the city. God was in charge of delivery!! Only with eyes of faith could Joshua SEE that Jericho was already defeated. Man's "Tightly Shut” is no match for the Lord's “Have Delivered!” The Circle Maker, (Praying Through)

Big Green Miracle Brother

In 1986 my brother's wife called me, and told me that Roger was in the hospital, he had experienced a fall and injury working his 2nd job on Saturdays. He was primarily a lineman for an independent telephone company in North Georgia, and his Saturday job was also working on poles, but instead servicing or installing cable TV lines. I had something "important" that day, and thought I would go to the hospital the next day. It was over an hour to the John L. Hutcheson Memorial (Tri-County Hospital) in Fort Oglethorpe, and I needed several hours to set aside for the trip.

It was not till a 2nd phone call that I learned the seriousness of his injury... of course, falling off a telephone pole SOUNDED serious, but his wife's voice had seemed so calm, I wasn't really concerned. "You'd better come, he's on a ventilator." To this day I hate those things...

It was not till arriving at the huge, sprawling complex of one of the decades long "finer" trauma hospitals in that area that I learned his "diagnosis and prognosis." The pole he was working on was rotten, and had broken. When it fell, he, being strapped to it, was able to ride it safely to the ground (good).... and then it bounced, and landed on top of him. Not good. He was crushed in the middle part of his body, hips and ribs had become shrapnel that shredded tissue and organs in his abdomen.

I've never seen, in decades of hospital visits, anything like his situation. There were 5 tubes and portals (a clavicle) pumping or dripping fluids into his body, and 4 draining things out. The ventilator was making it's continuous sounds, but he was completely oblivious in his medical unconsciousness. I did not know that his team of three doctors had already determined that he would die. Slowing the 4 realizations: he would die of lung failure, since they were so damaged. Or he would die of kidney failure, due to the injuries received. Heart failure was imminent, due to the damage to so many blood vessels, and the stress. Or the infection from all the ruptures in his digestive system, similar to anunchecked appendix rupture, would take his life. The doctor team had decided NOT to do any surgeries, it was simply be useless, and torture his body more. He would die, slowly slip away. Hour by hour we watched, and waited. A nurse sat on a stool beside him 24/7, monitoring every device in the room. I remember crying on my bed, a praying a simple prayer: "Lord, I have buried 2 (mom and dad) I cannot bury another one right now."

There was also a curious complication... since he was working on a second job, his health insurance was balking at paying for his hospital care!! Finally they were persuaded that "insurance is insurance" and they had to step up. And then, a more 'curious' complication. He kept on "NOT DYING!!" Every day was not his last, it was his next!! The team of doctors decided they had to start some repairs in different areas. Can't let him mend like he was! Each surgery helped. But the crushed pelvis was very challenging, bones splintered and... no reasonable way to repair. BUT, there was a young doctor on his first assignment there, freshly returned from Switzerland, having learned a new technique of setting bones from the outside in. This procedure had never been tried in the USA, but it was the only option.

So, if you've ever seen Tinker Toys assembled in wild fashion, this became their plan, and it's gruesome. Drill through the flesh into the bone fragment. Screw a stainless steel rod into each fragment. With slow, time-taking brute force, shift the fragments together like puzzle pieces, so they can mend together. Then all the rods on the outside are bolted together like a child's wacky science project. And it worked! He was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. Thankfully the stuff was covered most times by a sheet, and he looked like he hugely pregnant. He was slowing brought back to consciousness, and could move enough to communicate by touching letters of the alphabet.

Weeks passed. One Sunday afternoon some men from his work came to visit his wife in the waiting room, and I thought that was very nice of them. His wife was sobbing, I thought touched by their kindness. Then she shared the conversation: Because my brother had NOT CALLED IN to the office for his 30 day absence, he was going to be terminated the next day, including all benefits!! WHAT?? I'm sitting 20 feet away, smiling inside at how nice to take Sunday afternoon to visit the hospital, and these guys are terminating a 20 year employee in the CCU, projected still to die, because he hasn't made a phone call?

Thankfully, the union he was a member of stepped in, and explained the possible scenario for the company should they proceed with termination. They backed down from their "proposal." Meanwhile, my brother, greener by the day, still continued to "not die" (had 2 young sons at home) which created continuous medical challenges to repair organ by organ, muscle by muscle, bone by bone. Months are now ticking in ICU. And he keeps improving! Still, ever other time I visit him, I have to step out and drop my head to my knees, to not faint from the horror of what my eyes are seeing.

He was eventually moved to the Rehabilitation Unit!! Sitting up in bed, Lisa and I visited one evening, and he was talking, smiling (still bolted together!) and eating some soup. Then, frightening to me, all the lights went out, and every hum in that hospital went quiet. I prayed "Lord, after all he's been through... don't let him die for a power outage!!" I looked up, and realized that all that equipment was really gone from his body... then I thought of the 30 bed CCU where he had lived, and thought how all of those critical patients would quietly slip away. Yet not a life pump beeped in alarm, no crepe soled nurses ran down the corridors, just all quiet.

Then through the open window, I could hear a sound that reminded me of bulldozers coming up to full throttle under a heavy load... The UPS system was coming online, and full power was immediately restored in that massive complex. Even the fluorescents came on. When disconnected from the TVA power grid, the diesel generators automatically responded, and took over the entire complex... I tried to climb through the window, I wanted to see this "one more miracle!!" I looked up to my brother again, and he was picking out carrots from his soup: "Who would ever put sliced carrots in tomato soup?"

What the Lord spoke to me, and the lesson I learned through all this, was like an audible human voice from the Lord: "Tom, when you get to the point of disconnect from THIS world, and all that you see and depend on, and worry about, you'll be able to see that MY POWER is already there, fully available, more than fully capable. You choose."

If you see my big brother today, and walk behind him, you will see a little "shimmy" in his walk, but walk he does!!! Much older than me, he approaches 70, and IS STILL WORKING for that same phone company!!

No matter how bad things get, there is always HOPE. "Never Before," is God's invitation to: "Watch Me Work." What are the chances of a doctor just returned from Switzerland with knowledge of a new technique ending up via New York City in Northwest GA? How many people survive 4 medical death sentences at the same time? How many people keep their job, when the bosses and board have decided to fire them? How many people get their story written up as a "first" in the New England Journal of Medicine? And how do you replace an audio/visual lesson from the Lord: "When you're ready to make the change from this world's power to MINE.... it's here, and I'm ready and ABLE. The GRID is not the power source, I AM!!"

Package Enroute!

It was a simple thing. A college daughter was back at school, and needed a new filter for her air cleaner. We have an account with a national company that supplies such. The representative was so kind as to do extra research to cross reference much info to find the right filter for an OLD unit. With a little more work, the order was charged, and set up for direct shipment by a well-known shipper to the college PO, and thus the daughter's inbox.

Problem - from tracking email, we noticed her address has gotten adjusted a little, omitting her name, and referring to daughter's address as a PO Box. The University calls it something else, and daughter is fearful that package will be rejected, based on printed policies. In fact, in 4 years, we've never referred to it on any address label as a PO Box. (I've seen it, I'd call it a PO Box!).

Father, having the University's number in my cell phone, calls the school's Post Office, speaks to one of the nicest people in the hemisphere, who assures dad that they are the receiving point for this shipper. They will make sure that daughter's inbox gets a note as soon as the package is received. Dad emails the tracking information, so both he and University PO can track the package. (This part is kind of fun... to note what cities a small package travels through). Hanging up the phone, the thought comes to mind, as if I were humorously speaking to my daughter... "You don't know who your father is..." (But all I had REALLY done was enlist the help of kind strangers in a simple quest).

Which brings to mind Bible stories that tell of angels' arrivals to reveal information: of babies on the way, of dangers to avoid, of future things to come that are too amazing to explain. What might be some of the good things God has on the way for us?

Are they in a distant city whose name is barely recognizable, that we have no contact with whatsoever? Could God's good things for us, scheduled for a delivery time unknown, be even now in the hands of a kind, and efficient stranger?

Silent He may seem sometimes, elusive may be His ways without a web-based tracking system,
unexplainable may be His methods... But surely He can be trusted for our provision, surely He can be depended upon for safe delivery!