Faith, Hope, and Gail

My pastor’s wife passed away last week. Gail was still young enough to host big parties and bounce grand-babies on her knee. For five years she fought cancer with everything she had, including faith in a good God – a healing God, while our church family petitioned God for healing. Tomorrow is the Memorial Service at the church. I expect the church will be packed.

How many prayers went up for Gail in the last five years? Too many to count! Our church has seen some other miraculous healings through prayer. Miracles fuel faith. Our prayers were not merely recited mantras. They were impassioned pleas for divine intervention. Now we suffer from the blow.

Although our faith may be challenged, it remains strong. Why? The unspoken dilemma we face is the knowledge that without hope in God we perish too. Hope is a choice. In the bond of brotherhood, grim faces show determination to hold fast, to endure, to pull each other up. We cling to hope as a drowning man clings to a branch.

So we will gather at the church. Most of us will simply come to be there as a witness. Our presence is our testimony. It is the testimony of love. We are there to hold the pastor and his family close as we grieve together.  When we gather at the church, love will be a thick presence.

Love suffers long and is kind. It bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. For now we see in a mirror, dimly. We know only part of the story. In and through the tears, the victory of I Corinthians 13 is the glory of God amongst us. At our little church tomorrow evening you will see faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is Love.

Tribute to Dad

My love of nature and my love for my father are so enmeshed that I cannot imagine one without the other. Sharing nature together was our connection to each other. One of my favorite things was sitting in a canoe with my dad in the middle of a silent lake, with just the drip, drip, drip off the paddle betraying our presence to the ducks, beavers, trout, pelicans, and tadpoles.

Bumble Bee Sing-Alongs

As I head into summer, my mother has started to ask when I will come visit her again. I make my annual trek to Canada each summer. I rarely find a convenient time to go, but it is necessary. My elderly mother would find the long flight to visit me too hard on her body. Thinking about my mother flying on airplanes evokes a funny memory from over thirty years ago. It also reminds me why she is more than worth the yearly flights to Canada.

I recall the horror I felt as a teenager when my mother returned from her very first airplane trip. At 30,000 feet, it had occurred to her that she would be stuck in the plane for hours with total strangers. For most people, that thought would not illicit any notable reaction, but for my mom it seemed a waste of an opportunity. She stood up in the plane and made an announcement. – I am not making this up!

Church Pet Peeves – Part Two

Although my earlier post, “Church Peeves – Part One,” was a rant, I hope this isn’t read so much as a criticism, but as constructive… um… Oh, okay. I guess it is criticism. But there is hope here.  – There. I underlined it for emphasis. This Part Deux is intended to be easier to digest than Part Un in that I am bringing some helpful guidelines instead of just airing my beefs as I did in my last post.

The reason for this double entendre loaded posting is that what I want to talk about is what my blushing mother would call “six.”  As in, “When I was a girl, we weren’t allowed to go to the movies because, you know, they might show some six.” When I was much younger, I assumed that she was using an abbreviation to refer to 666, the sign of the beast from the book of Revelation. That was the scariest six that I knew about at the time, so it made sense that she might not want to go to movies about that. I know better now – There are scarier sixes. Haha. Just kidding!

Church Pet Peeves – Part One

I was fidgeting in my folding chair. The church was almost filled, and I looked for an easy exit in case of emergency, as is my weekly habit. No, I’m not worried about fire in church – except perhaps sometimes during a candle-lit Christmas service. In general, I just want to have the option of an easy exit out.

Having my heart and life committed to God is one thing. That was relatively easy compared to the prospect of having one or two hours of my Sundays committed to sitting amongst this mixed bag of humanity. People of faith are a bit unpredictable at times. I am often uneasy in their presence.

Fishy Business

Island Fish and Chips at Kings Shops, Waikoloa Village

G and I stopped by Island Fish and Chips for lunch one day on our way home from the beach. Its tucked in behind some fancy shmancy over-priced tourist stores. A little hole in the wall, where you pay your money and stand around to wait till they bring it to the counter. “It” meaning, fish and chips because that’s all you want to get there. I am guessing they serve other things, but why buy chicken at a fish and chips place?

I’m rich.

I’m rich?? I felt compelled to explain/backtrack/denounce/announce my last posting where I quoted my grandmother, “If you aren’t wise at 50 and rich at 60, you will be a poor fool all your life.”  Although I am glad for the wisdom learned from 50 years of living, I haven’t yet reached 60. I have one more decade to hold at bay the curse of my grandmother!! 

Green balloons

I’m celebrating my 50^th birthday at the beach. Half a century, yeah – I know. I joked with my sister not to give me black balloons. I reminded her that she had already done that when I turned forty. If my fortieth birthday earned me black balloons, my fiftieth balloons deserve a color that reflects maturity of life – like the deep green of summer. A week later, I received a birthday card from my sister with a package of green balloons tucked inside.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

So glad its the weekend!

I have been coming out of a learning curve at work. I love learning new things but I hate BEING a learner. Being a learner at work makes me feel incompetent. I go too slow and I make mistakes. I am impatient with myself.

What we can learn from May 21st

I’m thinking about the Doomsday prediction that there would be a big earthquake starting on May 21 and it would continue for months until the world finally was destroyed in October. That seems like a long time to destroy the world. But what do I know? It’s a huge event to plan.

There has been a lot of ridicule of this prediction. I admit that I took part in a bit of that, although I have to say I admire the courage of those who were brave enough to risk standing for this. They trusted in this and burned their proverbial bridges to do it. A lot of us might say we stand for something, but do we put anything on the line? These people had a lot of faith in what they thought was true. That counts for something, even if they were misguided.