"Behind me and before, You hem me in and rest Your hand upon me..."

"Behind me and before, You hem me in and rest Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain." (Psalms 139:5-6)

A friend had a car accident. He took out several trees and workers had to use a chain saw to get the truck out. The air bag deployed and, seeing smoke, he kicked the door open and got out of the truck. He had hit his eye on the steering wheel and I suspect his glasses were the cause of his badly cut left eye. When I arrived at the hospital, his face was so swollen, he could not open his left eye. He had gone to sleep and, on a curve, had simply gone straight and ended up in the trees.

Could we say, "Where were You, Lord?" "Why didn't You protect him?" "Why did You not 'hem him in'?"

We could say that. Consider though, what are the chances of going across a major highway, asleep, and not hitting any oncoming cars? Pretty slim, I think. Was he "hemmed" in? I think so.

This is one more addition to my mental list of all the times things could have gone drastically wrong and yet because we are hemmed in, tragedy has not happened. Still, I am not so simple-minded that I think all those who have suffered tragedy were somehow not hemmed in. I know there are scads of people who are faithful followers and diligent seekers of God's protection and grace, people who are quick to let others know from where their protection comes; yet some of those very people suffer horrible tragedies themselves or within their families.

I cannot make complete sense of it but I do know that they, too, were hemmed in. Perhaps sometimes that personification of evil, the devil, has bargained with God in a similar way as he did concerning Job. Satan believed, and told God, that Job was God-fearing and blameless because God had surrounded him and his family with His protection. Satan tells God, "..now put forth Your hand and touch anything that he has, and surely he will blaspheme You to Your face." So God allows all kinds of misfortune and tragedy to afflict Job.

Whether or not some of our afflictions or absolute tragedies are specifically allowed by God to prove to satan we are worth our words, is a moot point. What does matter is what we do with the troubles and tragedies that befall us. Will we buckle under and say that surely God is not God or He would not have allowed such tragedy to come upon us? Or will we continue to believe that God, in His omnipotent wisdom, has a different way for us to show our belief to others?

In the strength of our belief, and our continuance in our faith- especially in the midst of seemingly senseless tragedies, we pull others toward God with the kinematic effect of the grace that is ours during a tragedy. The simple truth is that we must not let the devilish laugh of satan take over our thinking. If, in the midst of sorrow, we can say, "Blessed be God," then the tragedy that has befallen us will not be seen as evil winning but as a battle being won. A battle to show God's might and strength and love. A battle full of grace.

Roller Skate Religion?

The simplicity of roller skates, the speed, the turns, the surprise when you fall and you get back up unhurt and continue on, the sore ankles later but the memory of the fun; gosh, it is such a great analogy with our walk with God. Our lives are full of "funny turns," and some not so funny at all, but when we look back, we see things differently. Sometimes, we see more clearly how God was working in our lives to bring about that which we could not have foreseen. Thinking of those "funny turns" reminded me of a thaumatrope and I wondered if I could use the word as an adjective- i.e., "the thaumatropical workings of God in our lives." So I looked it up and there, at my fingertips, lunging into my being, was the funny turn of getting to know something I had not known, and should know, and feel giddy to know. Written there is the very application of what I was thinking concerning the funny turns in our lives and God having everything to do with them. Thaumatology-- the study of miracles! What a funny turn!

When I was a young gal, maybe six, I spent the first three weeks of December hinting that I wanted roller skates for Christmas.

Oh, now that I am thinking of it, I think we last four children of the nine, were still writing letters to Santa. We would write them and put them on the windowsill for good ole St. Nick to pick up at his leisure...at least by the next morning! I would sneak my letter to its spot and if it was still there the next day, I began to doubt all the warnings about St. Nick watching us to see if we were good. "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows if you're awake..." Geesh! I see now why I was always afraid to go outside by myself. If St. Nick was out there peeking in the windows to see how we were acting, well, he might just decide to grab up a little morsel of a child and take said child back to the North Pole--since he had no real children. Ah, the tangled webs my young mind wove.

The roller skates I wanted were not the boot kind but were the kind that you strapped to your shoes. The year was 1958 and skates of any kind were a luxury for us. My siblings and I would skate in the basement sharing a pair of skates someone had given us. The basement floor was a quarter inch thick cement with lots of holes and cracks. We would find some fairly smooth places though and skate as fast as we could, having something picked out as a ready grabbing point to help us stop before we reached a crack or hole in the thin concrete. There was just dirt under the concrete but a patch of it could sure make you fall. Rough concrete edges in dirt is not very pleasant on young elbows and knees.

I was certain that if I had my own skates I would soon be so good at skating I could fly like the wind. Then if I got to go to the local skating rink again, I would be so quick and light on my skates that I would not be afraid of the big kids who went zooming past. The rink was twenty five miles away so we rarely went but I wanted to be prepared.

Christmas Eve had finally arrived and I thought I would burst with anticipation. The boys went with my Dad to get a tree from the woods while we girls helped clean the house and helped some with the cooking. When the boys came back with the tree we all did our yearly complaining that it was too small. When they set it up though, it was, as it was every year, so tall it bent at the top and so big around it hardly fit through the door. After lunch a quilt was hung up across the doorway of the room where the tree was, and the young ones had to take a nap.

When we awoke, the house was tidied up even more and mom was skittering around between the room with the tree, checking on St. Nick, and the kitchen, where she was finishing the cranberry sauce and applesauce cakes. I don't know why the cranberries were always done on Christmas eve but perhaps it was to keep the youngsters out of the way as we listened to the pop of the cranberry skins.

It was after my nap, while sitting in the kitchen watching my Mom cook, when she asked me, "What do you really want for Christmas?" Oh my, I was in a quandary. If I said, "roller skates," and they weren't there, would she feel bad? So I said, "Oh, I don't really care."

Later that evening when the quilt was taken off the doorway, there was the tree looking amazingly beautiful and lots of presents around. I don't remember anything else about that specific Christmas but I do remember opening a box and seeing my own pair of slip-on roller skates and my thought that I wished I had told my Mom earlier that what I really wanted was a pair of roller skates.

I think, I hope, I went to my Mom later and told her that when she asked me earlier what I wanted, I had started to say, "roller skates," but had hesitated in case I didn't get them. Of course, even if I did go back and tell her, it was not quite the same. If I had said it when she first asked me, she would have known that she had gotten me the desire of my heart.

I realize, in our human frame of mind, this story is not exactly like God giving us the desires of our heart, (Psalm 37:4), but it does remind me of the fact that God has said He will give us the desires of our hearts. I have wondered, and probably you have too, why we would need to ask, then, for the things we need or want. If God knows the desires of our heart, why would we need to verbalize our desires to Him?

I think we need to verbalize our prayer so that we have a firm point of reference in our own minds of what we think we want. Then when we realize the desire, the request, has been granted, we are also reminded of God's presence in our lives and His love for us. I think "He who is in Heaven, laughs" (Psalm 2:4) at our joy and delight in His gifts to us.