Safety and Sleeping Beauty

    I want to protect them all. I want to build a giant fence around them and them safe beside me. Not just my girls but every child every where. Teachers have this thing in them. The thing that makes us see every child we ever interact with as "ours". We want to protect them from every harmful thing they might possibly find.  After Friday, the urge to protect is almost overwhelming. I'm sure that if we enacted just the right laws everyone would be safe. I'm sure if we came up with just the right program no one would feel the need to do such awful thing. Maybe, if we got rid of all the guns, knives, fertilizer, peanuts, etc we would be safe. Maybe if my girls and I hid in our house we could avoid all the dangers outside.
  Maybe if we destroyed all the spinning wheels in the kingdom our kids would be safe.
  Sleeping Beauty was the beloved princess who was cursed from birth. Her curse was that she would die from a prick of a spinning wheel.  So her loving parents did the only thing loving parents could do. They destroyed all the spinning wheels in the kingdom.  I can see the spinners wondering why on earth all their tools were being destroyed. After all, spinning wheels don't kill people, curses do. These people though were good followers of their king and they gave up their spinning wheels.  Everyone gave up the spinning wheels except the palace spinner. She kept hers hidden in a back room in the palace. It was hidden so deeply that she thought it would be ok. Secrets though never turn out ok and some things happen no matter how diligent you are.  Sleeping Beauty went wandering around the castle one day and saw this strange machine. She reached out and touched it.
  We are all under a curse. We will all die even if we do everything in our power to avoid it.  I think of Sleeping Beauty's parents trying so hard to make everything perfect.  Then I think of my own attempts to control the uncontrollable.  Then I think of the parents whose children are gone. I think of the parents of the children who are hurt. I think of the children who are bullied.  All this innocence lying broken all around us hurts. Tears threaten to overwhelm me. Despair looms like a deep cloud. But God.
  God moves in the midst of this cloud. God is love and love is light and despair is forced to leave.  There is a joy that transcends all this mess. There is a love that allows me to put aside my need to control things I cannot control.
  We cannot legislate safety. There will always be at least one spinning wheel hidden in the castle. We can teach love. We can show light. We can hold on to the firm assurance that God is with us.  God is with us and that is enough.

Watch This!

“Watch this” he cries in delight. The newest trick he has learned is about to be shown in its entire splendor. He has worked for hours on this trick. He has perfected the takeoff and fallen a hundred times on landing but he is sure now that it will work. The trick will work and you will be amazed.

You watch because in this moment you are not paying attention to the millions of things that are grabbing at you. You watch because this is your beloved son and you want to see what he is going to make happen. The bike has become like an extension of his body. He knows it intimately. Even though it is only a machine, it has become part of him. 

You watch the near perfect execution of the trick and cheer for him. You watch. That is all you do. You watch.

“Watch this” God cries in delight. God has worked outside of time and brought together a new possibility. A new story is unfolding and you are being allowed to watch. You watch as unlikely pieces come together across space and time. You watch as forces you would never have imagined work together and create something vastly different from all that has gone before. You see the creation of beauty and you stand awed.

I was feeling low and wondering about this new story God is writing in my life. The story is strange. This story is making my heart stretch, bend in ways I would never have imagined. This story has peeled layer after layer of protective coverings off my soul. I had placed those coverings there on purpose. They were good for the time they served but now they have to come off and with the loss of each layer more and more receptors become available. These receptors capture joy and pain.   So while the good is so much better, the awful things that happen hurt more than one could imagine.

I was feeling low and wondering about this new story. I was tired of the new story and trying to figure out how to get back to the old story.  I was tired when I heard the cry “Watch this!”  I looked up from my thoughts to see God doing something beautiful.

God who rewrote the story of Ruth was not done with the story of me. God who rewrote the story of Elizabeth was not done with the story of me. God who rewrote the story of Samson was not done with the story of me. God who rewrote the story of Jesus, even though there seemed nothing left to do, was not done with the story of me.

“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.” (Isaiah 65:17-18)

So in quiet adoration, I watch. I watch and I wait and I prepare for the coming of the Lord. I wait and watch to see what this new story will be. I forget for a moment who I was and think on the possibility of who I will be.