Dry Times and Manna

As I go through dry times in my spiritual life, I am tempted to do several things:

I am tempted to think that God has abandoned me; I am tempted to seek distractions that occupy my mind so that I don’t have to think about the angst that exists within my heart; I am tempted to live in the past, remembering mountain tops in my spiritual life; I am tempted to sin or to take shortcuts to pleasure that do not include God’s commands; I am tempted to place such pressure on relationships with others that they cannot possibly meet my expectations.

When I am in these situations, it helps me to remember the Israelites and manna. God gave them manna as a food, but it was also a physical demonstration of His love and provision. He instructed them very specifically on how it was to be used…they were only to gather enough for the particular day, except the day before the Sabbath when they were to gather enough for two days. If they gathered more than they needed it spoiled, turning His good provision into something rotten.

So, how do I make this connection of my daily life to manna for the Israelites? Well, God provides each of us with daily life—with food and clothing, with shelter and relationships, with exposure to the beauty of the creation, with opportunities to commune with Him. These are our daily manna. They are always there, in varying quantities and varying qualities, no matter how many other things might negatively impact our lives. (The Israelites had manna, but they had plenty of problems, too).

When I think God has abandoned me, I remember the roof over my head, the food in my pantry (or my stomach), the cold glass of water I can drink whenever I want, the love of my family, the beauty of the sky and the creativity of the vegetation around my home.

When I am tempted to seek distractions in place of Him, I remember the instruction to seek Him first; when I take time to do this, He reorders my priorities, making the distractions less attractive and less imperative, and then, allows me greater enjoyment of them simply because they no longer carry the weight of needing to satisfy my deepest longings.

When I am tempted to live in the past, to try to resurrect past memorable spiritual experiences, I instead give thanks for those experiences without allowing them to become idols that corrupt the very love they were intended to convey.

When I am tempted to sin and take short cuts, I am reminded of the rotten quality of pleasure gathered outside of His will and the regret that follows, just as manna gathered in excess was no longer fit for its original purpose and brought sorrow to the Israelites.

When I am tempted to expect fellow humans to be God, I remember to forgive them their trespasses, and to set the bar of my expectations on the ground—not easy, but a concept upon which I work daily—God demands nothing of me except my faith; how can I justify my expectations of performance when He has none of me?

Arising each day when the prospect that this day is to be lived separately and without baggage from the day preceding, and without the after-load of the day to follow, is freeing. Just as the Israelites had only the manna of the day to gather, I have only to gather the moments of the day into communing with Him, living His will, and allowing His sovereignty to order my day, whatever may come.

Certainly life is not always or even frequently easy. But when my heart approaches life from this perspective, when the disruptions of the day are viewed within His sovereignty, when the tragedies that flash across the news are known to be known from all time by Him, when the fun of the day is seen as His provision for my sake, when the dry times are known to be His way of giving me discipline, of sharpening my will to be compliant with His, then my anxieties wither, my joy blossoms amongst the debris of whatever destructive events the day may bring.

Thanks be to God for His immeasurable Grace and Mercy, that gives me Hope in all these things.

Learning from bucket spells

When I was a child I could get fairly wound up. I don't remember the particular episode, but my mother, who passed away 10 years ago, told me that once I cried so loud and so long that I passed out. It so happened that at that moment I was standing in front of the large steel milk pail used to collect the milk from our dairy cows. I fell head-long into the bucket....fortunately for me (and for any milk that might have been ruined) it was empty.

As a child, I learned this did not usually bode well for me. When I had "bucket spells" I didn't "lose priviliges"--I got a "bridle wreath" switch applied to my bare legs. While those of latter generations might view this as unacceptable corporal punishment, the net effect of that consequence was much more productive than being sent to my room. The whole purpose of consequences is to show the offender that his or her offense is something that leads to results that are unpleasant....and I definitely got the point from "The Switch".

Was it harmful....well, my legs are not permanently scarred; I don't think my psyche is either. My spirit may show signs of what happened, but those are the rites of maturity that I cherish. I hold my mother, who administered "The Switch" periodically, in the highest regard as a person of integrity and loving compassion. No, I don't think it was harmful; I think it was her compassion that led her to discipline me. She knew that short-term pain that prevented long-term suffering was a great trade-off. So, if I have scars, they are in my spirit, and I view them as badges of learning, as warnings about paths I do not wish to retrace. After all, Jesus has scars that are the evidence of His love, and the proof that our scars were not acquired in vain.

Nothing much has changed since the original "bucket spell" of my third year of life. I still have breathholding spells, if not in the physical, in the emotional and spiritual. When something or someone causes me to suffer in a way I deem unacceptable, my emotions "hold their breath", my spirit turns inward--I shut down, ususally for a few minutes, a few hours, occassionally for a day or two. The consequence is not administered by my mother; generally its not administered by any other human; God knows me and He uses these times to teach me patience, forgiveness, recovery, healing, repentance--he uses these times as a way to remold this lump of clay into a little bit of a different shape....I pray that the shape is ever more in His image.

What is lasting..

In November of last year I awoke in the small, quiet hours of the morning. While that is not unusual, what happened next was: I had an overwhelming sense that I should enumerate the things in life for which I was grateful.



My list was made up mostly of simple creature comforts and of relationships. I thanked God for the comfortable bed in which I rested, for the security of the home in which we live, for the simple pleasure of a cold drink of water, for the ease with which each breath came, for the ability to move about--both ambulating and in the modern vehicles that we all use, for those whom I love and who love me; and at the end of my list, but the most important of all, infinitely so, for eternal life through the salvation provided by Jesus.



I wondered why I felt compelled to list these things that night. I am not prone to deep thinking in the middle of the night, and I confess, am often not grateful for the things that I too often take for granted but would miss dearly should they no longer be available. I arose the next morning with a sense of contentment mixed with puzzlement.



I did not think much about that night for several weeks. Then, early on a Saturday morning in December, I received a call from Jim, my sister's husband. Carmen had suffered a stroke in the middle of the night and was in the emergency room in a town 3 hours away. We drove there, and upon arriving found that she was still in the emergency room because of a lack of bed space in the hospital.



She was on her back on a simple stretcher and had been so for 11 hours. She could not have any fluids by mouth because she was unable to swallow effectively. She could have nothing for pain and had an excrutiating headache. Her entire left side was paralyzed, making ambulation impossible. As the afternoon progressed she became increasingly air hungry and finally had to be assisted with a ventilator. Over the next 36 hours she completely lost her ability to communicate with those she loved, and then she lost her life.



As I stood in that ER that Saturday afternoon, I thought about the things for which I had expressed gratitude weeks before. I realized that Carmen had the most uncomfortable of beds, that she was not able to be home where she felt most secure, that she could not experience the pleasure of a simple drink of water or a walk outdoors. Even breathing had become a labor. She could not even express her emotions and eventually she lost the ability to know that loved ones surrounded her.


Only one thing could not be taken from her--her relationship with Jesus Christ. And as she passed from this life to eternity, that most important of things for which I had expressed gratitude weeks before became the glorious reality for her. That reality awaits all who trust Jesus, and, in the mean time, I pray that God will give me the grace to be more grateful for the temporal and the eternal pleasures which He bestows upon us.

About Lucas

33 weeks and 4 days. That's how long my grandson, Lucas (Luke for short) has been alive. He's not born yet, but he already has a personality, has the genes of his Mom and Dad in the cells of his body, has the blood of his ancestors, including me, flowing through his heart and blood vessels. He probably doesn't have many deep thoughts yet....just, "Wow, its nice and warm in here; I wonder what's next?"

He is already a person, has been for some time, and I can't wait to meet him. But it is scary to see a grandson born into this world. I wonder, did my grandparents feel that way when I was born, or was the world safer to them than this world is to me?

I think I was so naive when Luke's Dad, Jason, was born, the thought never occurred to me that I was part of bringing a baby into a dangerous world. Maybe the optimism that pervades a 24 year old father is God's way of keeping us from thinking too much....if we thought TOO much we would never have children.

But now, at age 58, and after seeing all that has happened in the last decade, all the blurring of the safe boundaries we in this country thought existed (talk about naive), after experiencing the runaway train that is leaving transcendant beliefs behind and is heading for unabashed selfcenteredness, after wondering how God has it all figured out when so much is so messed up, I am not nearly so optimistic as I was 34 years ago.

Fortunately, its not about me and my comfort. Fortunately, there is a God. There is a God who ordained that Lucas would be conceived, who loves Luke more than I can no matter how deep my love for him, who already knows the days of his life, who has already died to redeem him from this corrupt and fallen world, who will give Mom and Dad the strength to love him as only parents can, to take pleasure in his simplest success, to discipline him when he needs it, to make sure he is loved but to make sure he is not inclined to think he is entitled to anything besides the opportunity to join us all in the labor to find purpose and sustenance.

I can't wait to see him, to put aside the dreads I have for this world, to love him in a manner that I have never experienced before...not more than my children, for that would not be possible, but not less, either, for he is part of one of them broken off to root and grow on his own, to learn his own lessons about how life is to be lived, about how he is to relate to his Creator, to come to his own realization of his inadequacy without the Father to make him complete--to fill the hole in his soul that only God can fill.

I can't wait, but I hope I have to for another 6 weeks and 3 days. After all, I'm a neonatologist and I don't like prematurity.